QTTEEl^S. 



359 



QUEERS. 



NATUliAL,-BUILT QUEEN-CELLS— LIFE SIZE. 



Photographed by IV. Z. Hutchinson. 



a slightly tart and a rank, strong, milky fla- 

 vor that is quite sickening if much be taken. 

 See Royal Jelly, under the heading An- 

 atomy OF Bees. 



WHAT does the QUEEN DO WHILE SEALED 



upy 



Candidly, we do not know very much about 

 it, although we have opened cells at every 

 stage after they were sealed until they were toothpick for 

 ready to hatch. One day after being sealed making the 

 they are simply ordinary larvse, although transposition. 

 rather larger than worker larvse of the same Almost every 

 age; after two or three days, a head begins cell was built 

 gradually to be '' mapped out," if that is the out and cap- 

 proper expression, and, later, some legs are ped, just as 

 seen folded up; last of all, a pair of delicate well as if they 

 wings come from somewhere,we hardly know had kept their 

 wh re. Two days before hatching we have own black 

 taken them out of the cell, and had them ma- | stock. In due 

 ture into perfect queens, by simply keeping time we had as 

 them in a warm place. We have also taken nice a lot of 

 them out of the cell before they were ma- fine yellow 

 ture, held the white, still, corpse-like form in queens as we 

 the hand while we admired it as long as we ever r eared- 

 chose, then put it back, waxed up the cell We have prac- 

 by warming a bit of wax in the fingers, and t i c e d this 

 had it hatch out three days after, as nice a method almost 

 queen as any. Mr. Langstroth mentions every year 



having seen the whole op- 

 eration by i)lacing a thin 

 glass tube, open at both 

 ends, into the cell, so as to 

 have it inclose the queen, 

 the bees being allowed to 

 cap it as usual. This ex- 

 periment was first made 

 by Iluber. With several 

 such glass queen-cells, we 

 presume the whole ope- 

 ration could be watched 

 from beginning to end. 



DAVIS' TRANSPOSITION 

 PROCESS. 



In the month of Au- 

 gust, 1874, after I had dis- 

 covered how to send lar- 

 vae for queen - rearing 

 safely by mail short dis- 

 tances, our friend, Mr. J. 

 L. Davis, of Delhi, Ing- 

 ham Co., Mich., wrote 

 that he would get a.large 

 number of queens from 

 the piece we sent him, for 

 he was going to remove 

 the larvae from the combs 

 and place them in queen- 

 cells already started in 

 his hives— of course, re- 

 moving the original larvae first. We caught 

 at the idea at once, and went to some hives 

 of hybrids that had persisted in tearing down 

 all the cells given them, and building others 

 from their own brood, and removed the lar- 

 vae from all the cells, substituting larvae 

 from the imported queen in its stead. We 

 used a quill 





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4 



•5- ^^- 



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A small piece of comb contain- 

 ing- an unusual number 

 of queen-cells. 



