1884.] BEES. 69 



is either queenlessness in the original stock, or more than one 

 in the swarm that issues. 



Dr. BowEN. Tlie gentleman has spoken of a hive being 

 deprived of its queen ; is there not such a thing as taking a 

 cell intended for a common bee, nourishing the larva, and 

 having it grow into a queen ? 



Mr. Jeffries. Yes, sir, the bees will do that. In order 

 to obtain that result, you take a stock of bees that has the 

 larvffi in all stages, from one day up to capping, and deprive 

 them of their queen, in the space of two or three hours, they 

 will go to work and enlarge the cells of grubs that would 

 otherwise be workers or imperfect females, and by nourishing 

 those larvae and feeding them with a richer pabulum, they will 

 produce a queen. The difference between the queen and the 

 worker is, that in the queen the ovarian organs are developed 

 and in the worker they are suppressed. 



Dr. BowEN. Is a queen bee hatched as soon as the others ? 



Mr. Jeffries. Exactly the same. From fifteen days and 

 eighteen hours from the time the egg is laid up to sixteen 

 days and a half. That is the longest time that we can find. 

 It makes no difference whether you take a grub that would 

 be a worker or whether you take an egg laid purposely for a 

 queen, in a queen's cell. 



Mr. Van Hoosear. Can you tell us why honey will not 

 run out of a cell that is not full ? 



Mr. Jeffries. Because of atmospheric pressure. That is 

 the only answer that I can give you. When a cell is filled 

 with honey by the bee, it is not filled perpendicularly full, as 

 it is where you cut the capping off. They fill the cell with an 

 oblique dip, by pressing over the back of it, and when they 

 cap it, they commence to cap it on the lower side, capping 

 until they reach nearly the upper edge of the cell. The way 

 the expert in handling honey determines whether a box of 

 honey was put up by the Italian or by the common black bee 

 (and he does not have to be a very great expert, either, to be 

 able to tell) is by the way the capping is put on. The black 



