EEV. H. E. PEEL — BEES AND BEE-KEF.PIXG. 187 



enumerating the difference between the queen and the worker-hee. 

 The queen is unable to feed herself. She has no long proboscis 

 with which to suck the nectar from the flowers, but depends 

 entirely upon the attentions of the workers. In the height of the 

 egg-laying season she needs feeding every half hour or fifteen 

 minutes. This is to my mind the reason why you always see the 

 bees turning their faces to the queen in a hive, to be able to supply 

 her wants the instant that she gives any intimation of a wish for 

 food, also to be ready to attend to the egg the moment that it is 

 laid, .and therefore she has no pollen basket on her hinder legs. 

 The queen has also her organs of reproduction fully developed so 

 that she can fulfil all the offices of a mother. Such is the wonder- 

 ful effect of the different food given by the bees to the occupant of 

 the royal cell. 



The process of rearing queens to meet some special emergency, 

 such as the death of an existing queen, is even more wonderful 

 than the one already described. If the bees have worker-eggs, or 

 larvae not more than three days old, they make one large cell out 

 of three by nibbling away the partitions of two cells adjoining a 

 third. They destroy the eggs or larvae in two of these cells, and 

 give the occupant of the other the royal jelly with which the 

 queens are usually fed. They then enlarge the cell so as to give 

 the grub ample space for its development, and as a security against 

 failure they generally start a number of queen cells, although the 

 work is not often continued upon all. Notice the difference in the 

 capping of brood-cells and honey-cells, the latter air-tight, the 

 former not, and the reasons for this. Bees will hatch oiit a queen 

 from cells constructed and from eggs sealed up by other bees. 



Let me tell you the history of the queen in my own observatory- 

 hive. This is made to receive the frames of what is called a 

 Woodbury hive, the first sort of the moveable combed hives which 

 was known in England. It holds six combs, three on each side, 

 one being placed above the other for the purpose of observation. 

 This is of course not the natural manner in which the bees would 

 build their combs ; they would build them side by side, placing 

 their brood in the middle, in order to economise the heat for 

 hatching them out. Six frames were brought from a Woodbiiry 

 hive in my garden and placed in the observatory-hive in my study. 

 These unfortunately were taken from a quecnless hive during my 

 absence from home, and the combs themselves were more filled 

 with honey, so as to look prettier than with brood. There was no 

 young brood, in fact, from which the bees could make a queen. 

 For some time the stock dwindled down, no bees being hatched, as 

 there was no queen to lay fresh eggs. Upon my return home I 

 soon ascertained the state of things, and caused a frame of comb 

 from another hive with four sealed queen-cells upon it to be given 

 to the diminishing remnant of bees which were still left. As soon 

 as the comb was given to them, they seemed to take a new lease of 

 life, collecting round two of tlic queen-cells and beginning to hatch 

 out a queen. Before this could be done, however, before the six- 



