Principal household insects of the United States . they would enter it, and theking and queen, being both active, would attend to the wants of the newcolony and superintend the rearing of the first brood of workers andsoldiers, which would then assume the laborious duties of the youngcolony. Thereafter the queen, by constant and liberal feeding andabsolute inaction, would increase immensely, her abdomen becomingmany thousand times its original size. She would practically lose thepower of locomotion and become a mere egg-laying machine of enormouscapacity. Allied species whose habits have been
Principal household insects of the United States . they would enter it, and theking and queen, being both active, would attend to the wants of the newcolony and superintend the rearing of the first brood of workers andsoldiers, which would then assume the laborious duties of the youngcolony. Thereafter the queen, by constant and liberal feeding andabsolute inaction, would increase immensely, her abdomen becomingmany thousand times its original size. She would practically lose thepower of locomotion and become a mere egg-laying machine of enormouscapacity. Allied species whose habits have been studied in this par-ticular indicate an egg-laying rate of CO per minute, or something like80,000 per day. In the absence of a queen, however, white ants are able to developfrom a very young larva or a nymph of what would otherwise become awinged female what is known as a supplementary queen, which is neverwinged and never leaves the colony. This supplementary queen (, a) is smaller than the perfect sexed queen, but subserves all the needs. Fifi. 29.—Termes jlavipes: a, head of winged female viewed from above; b, same from below, withmouth parts opened out—greatly enlarged (original). of the colony in the matter of egg laying, and is the only parent insectso far found in the nests of the common white ant in this a true queen exists or not is, therefore, open to question; ifnot, all the individuals which escape in |Jie spring and summer migra-tions must perish, and this swarming would, therefore, have to be con-sidered a mere survival of a once useful feature in the economy of thisinsect, now no longer, or rarely, of service. The normal method of the formation of new colonies is probably bythe mere division Or splitting up of old ones or the carrying of infestedlogs or timbers from one point to another. The development of these curious insects is very simple. There isscarcely any metamorphosis, the change from the young larva to theadult being very grad
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectinsectp, bookyear1896
