THE QUEEN BEE. 



33 



mother bee, a bee that has developed under all the conditions 

 necessary to produce a queen. She may emerge from the cell 

 perfect, but her powers of reproduction may never be completed, 

 as will be seen further on. So with a working-bee. She emerges 

 from her cell with her ovaries as complete as those of a queen, and 

 under certain conditions, to be named when treating of the 

 u'orking-hees, the embryo eggs contained therein sometimes develop 

 the masculine life-germ, and she becomes what is termed a fertile 

 worker. In her development, nature has stepped in and effectually 

 barred the door against her ever receiving completion. 



The queen, when she enters into her new life (the imago) will 

 have her ovaries surcharged with embryo ovules. These will 

 develop under every condition and every circumstance, accidents 

 excepted. She is perfect. She is also perfect in another sense 

 (virginal). Her reproductive and generative organs are fully 

 developed, but the latter, when the final metamorphosis has been 

 completed, is void of the feminine life-germ, that is to transform 

 the male eggs in the ovaries into females — working-bees and queens 

 of future swarms. It is posible for queen bees never to produce 

 females. 



Sometimes this happens naturally, and it is possible, artifi- 

 cially, to compel the queen to lay eggs that hatch out male bees 

 only. 



In handling frames with queen cells thereon, containing the 

 larva or nymph, the greatest cai'e should always be taken not to 

 injure the inmate, a sudden jerk, or holding the frame so that the 

 developing pupa is removed from her natural position, frequently 

 results in producing a deformed queen, by crippling her wing, so 

 that she is incapable of taking her marital flight, the result being 

 that she is a dx'one layer from the beginning. 



A knowledge of the queen bee is the axis around which re- 

 volves successful bee-keeping, and its failure is always more or less 

 caused by a want of that knowledge. By a knowledge of the 

 queen bee I do not mean a scientific knowledge, or a knowledge 

 of her natural history, but a practical knowledge. A knowledge 

 of a queen bee is not the survival of the fittest, but the selec- 

 tion of the fittest. "By their fruits shall ye know them." There 

 is no beekeeper but must have observed that certain of his 

 hives are more profitable than others ; not profitable as regards 

 increase in colonies, but profitable in their yield of surplus honey. 

 It has always been so. There is no industry in which immediate 



