egg : when the eggs of bees, which are of a lengthened 

 oval shape, and bluish in colour and slightly curved, are 

 deposited and made to adhere at the bottom of each of the 

 cells, they remain four days before they are hatched. The 

 Queen egg is always laid in a cell made at the edge of the 

 comb, and worker eggs always in the centre of the comb. 

 The former plan is followed to avoid feeding the worker 

 brood or larva with the Queen-making jelly (a compound of 

 " farina and honey "), and the latter to obtain the necessary 

 warmth of the parallel combs, filled with other brood, and 

 which the bees, by clustering at the bases of the combs, 

 prevent being ventilated, and more certainly to retain the 

 required warmth of the 70 deg. Fahrenheit. With the 

 fewer number of the worker bees, the queen is raised in a 

 corner-shaped cell ; the worker in one truly hexagonal, 

 and supported on all sides by other cells. The Queen re- 

 ceives more pungent and nourishing food, quantities of 

 which are left in a yellow paste at the bottom of the queen 

 cell, whilst the worker has no food to spare, and is " pent 

 up " in its six-sided narrow cell. The Queen takes about 

 sixteen days to arrive at maturity ; the worker takes twenty- 

 one days for the same. Weather, however, makes a diffe- 

 rence in all these Nature's processes, and great care and ac- 

 curacy of observation is necessary in attempting to note the 

 facts, and the temperature has much to do with rearing a 

 perfect Queen, although there is always the five days' dif- 

 ference between the Queen and the worker p erfected bee. 

 Before this the Queen and worker larva have been sealed 

 in their respective cells, and have spun their cocoons, and 

 have gone into that sleep which is to raise them up in a 

 perfect condition. The Queen spins an incomplete cocoon 

 — that silken shroud that envelopes the larva —the size of 

 large cell preventing her completing it ; the worker spins a 

 complete cocoon, and the cells which originally had been 

 built up round by the bees, and then chased by their man- 

 dibles into the true hexagonal shape, leaving only the angles 

 supporting the six juncture pins of the adjoining cell on 



