[53] Cuvier thinks that either hornets, or else the drones, must be alluded to. Virgil, Georg. B. iv. l. 197, et seq., is one of those who think that bees are produced from flowers.
[54] I. e. from flowers.
[55] They arrange the eggs in the cells, but they cannot be said to sit.
[56] This is not the fact. The queen bee commences as a larva, and that the larva of a working bee, Cuvier says, which, placed in a larger cell, and nurtured in a different manner, developes its sex and becomes the queen of the new swarm.
[57] They are then in the chrysalis state.
[58] “Clavus.”
[59] It is the first hatched queen that puts the others to death.
[60] In consequence, really, of their pregnancy.
[61] The greater size of the abdomen makes the wings look shorter.
[62] The queen has a sting, like the working bees, but uses it less frequently.