186 EEV. H. R. PEEL — BEES AND BEEKEEPIXG. 



but she is not of much good in her fourth year. Tlie use of moveable 

 combed hives enables you to remove her at your pleasure when she 

 gets too old. 



Before the swarm leaves the hive with the queen, the bees take 

 care to provide a successor. For this purpose they construct cells 

 from two or four to twelve in number, of a peculiar shape, some- 

 thing like a large acorn hanging downwards, or a very small pear, 

 and usually at the lower end of the combs. In this the queen- 

 mother lays her ordinary egg, which after three days changes to a 

 grub. This grub or larva the workers feed for five days with 

 a peculiar food known as royal jelly. They then close the cell, 

 and the larva spins its cocoon for twenty-four hours, passes through 

 the pupa or nymph stage, and on the sixteenth day is developed 

 into a perfectly-formed queen. 



The queen you will see from the drawing which I hold in my 

 hand is a difi^erent insect altogether from the worker-bee or the 

 drone. Slie is made by one of those wonderful adaptations which 

 we meet with so frequently in Nature, and which Paley made so 

 much use of in his book on 'Natural Theology,' with a special 

 reference to certain duties which she has to fulfil in life. Her 

 wings are much shorter than those of the worker-bee or the drone, 

 as she never uses them except on the rare occasions when she leaves 

 the hive, viz. her one single marriage tour, which is never again 

 repeated, or when she accompanies a swarm, and then she will fly 

 as short a distance as her daughters will allow her to do. The 

 queen has much larger and much stronger legs than the worker-bee, 

 as she has perpetually to stride over the combs seeking empty cells 

 in which to lay her eggs, resting the weight of her body upon 

 them during that operation. Her abdomen is much longer than 

 that of the worker-bee, as it has to be thrust down to the very 

 bottom of the cells in order that the egg may adhere to the floor. 

 The abdomen is also destitute of the means of secreting wax. Her 

 sting is of a more curved form and one-third larger than that of a 

 worker. She never uses it on a human being (though I have 

 known a queen-bee hite a gentleman who put one in his mouth at 

 one of the displays in our bee-tent) nor upon a worker or drone, 

 but only upon a rival queen, or an unhatched princess. There 

 is another very important distinction between a queen and a worker, 

 which shows how Nature, or the God of Nature, has formed each 

 inhabitant of the hive with a view to its peculiar functions. On 

 the hinder legs of the worker-bees as they are returning to their 

 hives you can see with the naked eye a little hollow or basket, 

 which, as the spring arrives and they develope themselves, will be 

 seen to be filled with yellow or green pellets, which the bee has 

 collected with its front legs from the rest of its body, and thrust 

 back to its hind legs. These pellets are the pollen from the flowers, 

 about which I must say more hereafter. The pollen when mixed 

 with a little honey is used as bee-bread for feeding the young 

 brood. But it is not, the province of the queen either to collect the 

 pollen or to feed the brood. One other point I might notice in 



