212 The Ottawa Naturalist. [February 



the end of August it will have fully regained its normal strength. 

 From that time onward the queen will gradually contract 

 the space occupied by brood, and after the young bees hatch 

 in the outer frames, the cells are left unoccupied or are filled 

 with Autumn honey. Just as the space occupied by brood is 

 enlarged in the Spring Idv the queen from the centre outwards, 

 so it is contracted from the outside to the centre as the Autumn 

 draws near. This contraction is necessary because in Septem- 

 ber, though the days may still be warm, the nights are Uable to 

 be cold and frosty, thus causing the bees to cluster in a compact 

 mass, as during the winter, for the sake of warmth, and brood 

 in the outer combs if left uncovered by bees would certainly 

 perish. Before the autumn is too far advanced it is always 

 advisable for the beekeeper to make sure that none of his colonies 

 have become queenless, or are in even a worse condition, viz., 

 that of having a drone laying queen; and also to make equallv 

 sure that they have sufficient honey to carry the bees safely 

 through the long winter. When a A'irgin queen leaves the hive 

 for the purpose of mating, she sometimes fails to return and such 

 colonies must be promptly provided with another queen, other- 

 wise they will soon dwindle away and become a prey to the bees 

 worst enemy, the larvae or grubs of the bee-moth (Galleria 

 m.ellanoiis{\ 



/ 



Under normal conditions bees will always provide them- 

 selves with a new queen when necessary, but in order that they 

 may be able to do this successfully there must be either worker 

 eggs or very young worker larvae in the hive and a fair number 

 of drones still in the apiary. When the season is far advanced 

 and the drones have all or nearly all disappeared, this method 

 of re-queening wuth a virgin queen cannot be recommended, 

 owing to the uncertainty of her finding a mate. If the colony 

 is worth saving it will be better to purchase a mated queen 

 from some reliable dealer, rather than trust to chance. When 

 a virgin queen fails to mate within a few weeks after hatching, 

 she becomes what is known as a drone layer eggs laid by such 

 a queen are deposited in a most irregular manner, sometimes 

 two, three or even more in one cell. Another peculiarity is 

 that while these eggs produce ofily drones they are usually 

 deposited in worker cells instead of drone, with the result that 

 the inmates when hatched are little more than half their normal 

 size owmg to not having had sufficient room to attain their 

 full growth. 



A colony which has been in possession of a drone laying 

 queen for three or four weeks is in a sad plight and certainly 

 not worth trying to save as it will probably contain only a few 

 hundred bees and a varying number of dwarfed and useless'drones. 



