No. 63.] 229 



for raising young bees, unless they find eggs in the cells. Then, if 

 the cells are too deep, the bees cut them down to their proper depth, 

 which is about five-eighths or three-fourths of an inch for workers; 

 if too shallow they build on and extend them to the same depth in 

 new combs, and never alter them afterwards unless they are broken 

 by accident, or otherwise injured; so with the coarse cells which are 

 proper for raising drones and are always used for raising that class 

 of bees, when empty of honey, eggs are laid in them and they are 

 altered to an inch in depth. These cells are often changed after the 

 escape of the young drones and used for storing honey. In this case 

 coarse cells were made in the middle of the hive, which is very 

 unusual, and the fine cells were made on the back side of the hive, 

 near the place where their dead queen was suspended. This fact 

 would seem to show, that the bees had designed their breeding cells 

 where it would be most convenient for the queen to deposit her eggs; 

 but when it is known, as it was in this case, that the cells were too 

 deep, and filled with honey too, it shows clearly that the bees had 

 no design other than to store honey. 



The queen's cell is never made except when a young queen is want- 

 ed. Although in frequent instances there are several of them raised 

 in a hive of bees in a season, yet but one queen is ever raised in a 

 cell. They are usually attached to the side of the combs, by chang- 

 ing three workers' cells into one for a queen; they are made perfectly 

 round, pointing downwards, and are always destroyed by the bees by 

 being worked down to a mere knob, with a hole about the size of a 

 gold bead, very soon after the young queen has made her escape from 

 her cell. But this experiment illustrates another fact; it is this: The 

 polen of flowers (or bee bread,") is used only for feeding the larva?. 

 (Other experiments have proved that perfect bees never eat any.) 

 In order to satisfy myself on this point, I devised means to exhaust 

 the air in the hive of a portion of its vitality, which caused the bees 

 to descend upon the bottom board, leaving but few among the combs, 

 which greatly facilitated a minute inspection of the whole interior of 

 the hive: whereupon it was found that the combs were unusually 

 loaded with bee bread, for want of larvee to consume it. This con- 

 clusion was irresistible, for by examining other hives, for instance 

 the one hived July 2d, where young bees were raised in abundance, 

 no bread could be found deposited in any of the cells. Bees do not 

 often collect more bread than is needed to feed the young, until the 

 first cold chill in August, or until the drones are massacred, which 

 shows in every case that breeding is stopped, or greatly impeded. 

 The flowers in September usually yield a great abundance of pollen, 

 and as the breeding of the bees at this time in the season is always 

 upon the decline, more bread is stored at this time than at any other, 

 very little if any of which is ever removed by the bees, which accounts 

 for the abundant surplus of bread found in all old hives. And here it 

 is proper to remark that the success of the apiary depends principally 

 on the quantity and quality of farina or pollen, as well as honey, that 

 is yielded by the blossoms during the spring and forepart of summer. 



