490 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



ANSWERED BY 



OR,. C. C. IwULiIjBK,, 



Marengo, III. 



In this department will be answered those 

 questions needing- immediate attention, and 

 such as are not of sufficient special interest to 

 require replies from the 20 or more apiarists 

 who help to make "Queries and Replies" so 

 interesting on another page. In the main, It 

 will contain questions and answers upon mat- 

 ters that particularly interest beginners.— Ed. 



Source of the Royal Food. 



Where do the bees get the royal food ? 

 L. T. 



Answer. — Much the same way as a 

 cow gets her milk. She eats food and It 

 becomes milk ; the workers eat honey 

 and pollen and It becomes royal jelly. 

 Indeed, it was formerly supposed that 

 the royal jelly was a secretion of glands, 

 the same as milk, but at present I think 

 the resemblance is not considered so 

 close, but that the royal jelly, which, by 

 the way, is the same as the food given 

 to worker-larvai during the first three 

 days, is chyle from the chyle-stomach of 

 the worker. 



How the Queen Lays Eggs. 



Please tell me whether or not the 

 queen-bee lays all of the eggs in one 

 cell, and the brood-bees place the eggs 

 around? Please inform me of all par- 

 ticulars, as I would like to know about 

 this matter. II. N. 



Ashton, Nebr. 



Answer. — It would save a good deal 

 of travel on the part of the queen if she 

 were allowed daily to drop her two or 

 three thousand eggs all in one spot, but 

 perhaps the workers think tiiat would 

 leave her too little exercise for her 

 health, so they let her go from one cell 

 to another and put an egg in each. She 

 doesn't spend as much time to lay an 

 egg as a hen, and she never cackles — 

 just goes straight along to lay another. 

 The workers do all the work of cleaning 

 out and polishing the cells for her. 



In the busy season, if you carefully 

 lift out of a colony of Italians the comb 



having the queen, you may often see her 

 go right along with her egg-laying. 

 First she puts her head down in the cell 

 to see if it is all right. If the chamber- 

 maids haven't been around to slick it up 

 to suit her, she goes on to another. If 

 she finds that all right, she takes out 

 her head, straddles her long legs over 

 the cell, doubles up her long abdomen, 

 thrusts the end of it down into the cell, 

 and after a very short time withdraws 

 it, when you can look into the cell and 

 find an egg. 



Stings of the Queen and the Worker. 



Why has a queen that is reared from 

 a worker larva a crooked sting, and a 

 worker-bee of the same kind of larvae a 

 straight sting ? E. L. 



Answer. — I don't know. Perhaps the 

 same reason that makes any one of the 

 differences between a quoen and a work- 

 er. You see a queen is a fully-developed 

 female, and a worker is the same as a 

 queen, only not fully developed. The 

 amount and quality of the food given to 

 the larvas is what makes the difference. 

 To the young queen is given a surplus, 

 some of it being left in the cell when she 

 emerges, but the young worker has to 

 be satisfied with barely enough to bring 

 it to the point of a full-grown worker, 

 and not a speck of extra food is ever 

 left in the cell. 



To attempt to go any farther would 

 be to enter the field of speculation, and 

 that hardly comes in the province of 

 general questions. If you want to theor- 

 ize about it, you might take this theory : 

 The amount of food given to the worker- 

 larva suffices to produce the sting and 

 polish it, but just at the point where the 

 bending is to be done that makes the 

 graceful curve, the supply of grub gives 

 out, so the poor worker has to put up 

 with a plain, straight sting. Other 

 theories come crowding for expression, 

 but I forbear. 



dueen-Cells, Italians, Etc. 



Well, Doctor, it's questions, questions, 

 all the tima with you, I suppose. But I 

 think you will say so, when they get too 

 numerous. 



I introduced an Italian queen to a col- 

 ony nearly black, about 10 days ago. I 

 took the old queen out the day before, 

 and introduced the new one by putting 

 in the cage just as she came, and let the 

 bees release her by eating out the candy. 

 Five or six days afterwards I looked, of 



