386 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



the cells, and while you ai-e dividiuj^ the cells amoug the uuclei, you 

 may as well see that each nucleus has its fair share of the best- 

 lookiug cells. The best cells are generally amoug the largest and 

 longest, and are deeply pitted over the surface. A stubby cell 

 that is not pitted but has a smooth surface is not so likely to be good. 



AVhen the young queen is five to eight days old, she will fly out 

 on her wedding trip, and about three days later she will begin laying. 

 It may be well not to look for eggs till the queen is perhaps two 

 weeks old, for at first the eggs are few and not so easily found. If 

 you do not find eggs when the queen is two weeks old, you are not 

 likely to find any later — the queen has been loist on her wedding 

 trip or there is some other trouble. There have been cases where 

 a queen did not lay until more than three weeks old, but such queens 

 are not generally very good. 



It is a good i^laii to give a nucleus of frame of eggs or unsealed 

 brood when the young queen is four or five days old. If some bird 

 has caught the queen on her wedding trip, or if some other ill has 

 befallen her, such as entering the wrong hive, the bees will start 

 (lueon-cells from this young brood, and by that you may know there 

 is no queen present. This young brood seems also to have a sort of 

 stimulating elTect on the bees, and it is believed it may hurry up the 

 young queen in her work of laying. 



PRE-CONSTRUCTED QUEEN-CELLS. 



The kind of queen-cells we have been talking about so far are. those 

 that are built in a hive while a la^'ing queen is present. Besides 

 I)reparing for swarming, such cells are built when the old queen 

 is to be superseded. In the natural course of events, every queen 

 is superseded by the bees when three or four years old, sometimes 

 when the queen is only a few weeks old (although in such case it is 

 probably because the queen is not a good one), and sometimes a 

 queen is not superseded until five years old, and in rare cases a queen 

 may continue longer. Something depends on the seasons. A queen 

 in a large colony in a prosperous season will not live so long as one 

 that has been in a small colony or that has had seasons when little 

 work was done. These cells prepared by the bees while a laying 

 queen is present, whether for swarming or supersedure, are called 

 pre-couHti'Hctcd cells, and such cells are usually built on the edges 

 of the combs, or where there is some hole or irregularity in the comb. 

 The base of a pre-constructed cell is always rounding and not angular 

 like the base of a worker-cell. When the young queen has emerged 

 from a queen-cell, (.r lias been destroyed in it, the cell will in a few 

 da\s be torn down by the workers, leaving only the base or cup of 



