120 THE bee-keeper's guide; 



kinds of life. Some queens are so prolific that they fairly 

 demand hives of India rubber to accommodate them, keeping- 

 their hives gushing with bees and profitable activity; while 

 others are so inferior that the colonies make a poor, sickly 

 effort to survive at all, and usually succumb early, before the 

 adverse circumstances which are ever waiting to confront all 

 life on the globe. This lack of fecundity may be due to dis- 

 ease, improper development, or to special race or strain. This 

 fact promises rich fruit to the careful, persistent breeder. The 

 activity of the queen is governed largely by the activity of 

 the workers. The queen will either lay sparingly, or stop 

 altogether, in the interims of storing honey, while, on the 

 other hand, she is stimulated to lay to her utmost capacity 

 when all is life and activity in the hive. As the worker-bees 

 feed the laying queen, it is more than probable that with no 

 nectar to gather, the food is withheld, and so the queen is 

 unable to produce the eggs which demand a great amount of 

 nutritious food all ready to be absorbed. Thus, the whole mat- 

 ter is doubtless controlled by the workers. This refusal to lay 

 when nectar is wanting does not hold true, apparently, with 

 the Cyprian and Syrian bees. 



The old poetical notion that the queen is the revered and 

 admired sovereign of the colony, whose pathway is ever lined 

 by obsequious courtiers, whose person is ever the recipient of 

 loving caresses, and whose will is law in this bee-hive king- 

 dom, controlling all the activities inside the hive, and leading 

 the colony whithersoever it may go, is unquestionably mere 

 fiction. In the hive, as in the world, individuals are valued 

 for what they are worth. The queen, as the most important 

 individual, is regarded with solicitude, and her removal or loss 

 is noted with consternation, as the welfare of the colony is 

 threatened ; yet, let the queen become useless, and she is dis- 

 patched with the same absence of emotion that characterizes 

 the destruction of the drones when they have become super- 

 numeraries. It is very doubtful if emotion and sentimentality 

 are ever moving forces among the lower animals. There are 

 probably certain natural principles that govern in the economy 

 of the hive, and anything that conspires against, or tends to 

 intercept, the action of these principles, becomes an enemy to 



