This constitution of the hive and its various operations continues during the remainder of the season until the approach of winter cautions them from venturing abroad, when, if the temperature of the hive is much lowered, they hibernate and remain in a torpid condition until the sunshine of the following spring, and with it the flowering of plants, rouses them again to resume their suspended labours. The population of the hive having continued to increase, although not so vigorously as at first, up to the very intrusion of winter, and the renewed year giving renewed energy to the queen, the population thence rapidly further increasing, it becomes inconveniently thronged, especially as spring advances and hot weather sets in. These promptings then urge her to lay drone eggs, for which preparations have already been made by the workers, who have already framed for their reception—they being much larger insects—larger cells moulded precisely in the same manner, and which are also used occasionally as receptacles for honey, and always skirt the bottom of the several combs. This task she has completed in about five days, and it is carried on precisely in the same way as is practised in the case of the neuters; and they are nurtured by nursing-workers just like them. Of these eggs she lays, as before said, about a thousand, and the workers by some instinctive faculty have framed about such a number of the needful cells. The transformations of the drone occupy about twenty-four or twenty-five days, of which three are passed in the maturing of the egg which then hatches into the larva. This occupies nearly seven days in attaining its full growth, and the remaining portion of the time is spent in its spinning its cocoon, in the same way as the larva of the worker does, and it changes into the imago. To effect all these changes in the transformations of all the sexes, a heat of about seventy degrees is indispensable, but that of the hive in summer is considerably higher. They as well as the workers are assisted to emerge from the cocoon by some of the older workers, who use their mandibles to bite through the enclosure, and who also help to cleanse them from their exuviæ.