lo Feb., 191 2.] 



/^ce-kccpi/ig ill YictOTia. 



115 



The drones of a pure bred queen of any rare are alwav.s pure of the 

 same race., even though the queen her.self was mated to a drone of a dif- 

 ferent varietty. Thus, by having one single pure bred and purely mated 

 queen, and raising from her eggs a new queen for each colonv, the race 

 or strain of bees oi an entire apiary of hundreds of colonies may be 

 changed in one season. As each young queen is pure bred, her drone 

 progeny are also pure, irrespective of how she mated. The following 

 season there will therefore be none but pure drones in the apiarv. All 

 young queens will then be mated to pure drones ; and, if from a ])ure 

 bred mother, will produce queens, workers, and drones of pure race. 

 The mating takes place in the air, often a con.'^iderable di.stance away from 

 the apiary, and some of the queens will most likelv be mis-mated when 

 other bees exist wilhin two miles of the place. 



Fertilized eggs are deposited by the queen in the smaller or worker 

 cells of the comb; the cells are 1-5 in. in diameter — twenty-five to a .square 

 inch of comb surface. Unfertile eggs are laid into drone cells, which 

 are \ in. wide — sixteen to the square inch. By the use of full sheets 

 of comb foundation in the frames of the modern hive, the raising of 

 drones is reduced to a minimum, because the wax sheets are embossed with 

 the pattern of worker comb only. Any egg which is fertilized, and would 

 in the ordinary course produce a worker bee, can at the will of the nur.se 

 b es b? made to produce a queen, when necessary. This fact is made use 

 of in what is known as artificial queen-rearing, by depriving a suitable 

 colony of its queen and brood and substituting a comb containing eggs or 

 young larvae from a queen of the race or strain desired. 



After the egg which produces a worker is laid, it remains unaltered 

 for three days. It is then supplied with a minute quantity of larval focd 

 by the nurse bees, and a scarcely visible grub or larvae, which lies coiled 

 at the bottom of the cell in the shape of the small c of ordinary type 

 emerges. It grows rapidlv ; and, on the sixth day after emerging from 

 the egg, it assumes an upright position in the cell. The worker bees cap 

 the cell with a paper-like substance, the grub meanwhile spinning a cocoon 

 round itself in the cell. The young bee has now entered the third or 

 chrysalis stage, from which it emerges as the perfect insect, eighteen days 

 from the time the larva first appeared, or twenty-one days since the egg 

 was laid. In the case of the queen, the time of development is five davs 

 less, i.e., three days in the egg stage, six days in the larval state, and 

 seven days as chrysalis, or sixteen days in all from the time the egg was 

 laid to the young queen emerging from the sealed cell. 



The drone is in the egg for three days, larva seven days, and chrysalis 

 fourteen days, or a total of twenty-four to twenty-five days from the egg 

 to the perfect in.sect. The following table mav be useful in showing the 

 variations in the time of development: — 



{To be continued.) 



