QUEENS IN CONFINEMENT 135 



to rear her brood, although they were of a strange 

 species, and gave her no assistance. 



But the slow and laborious process of getting 

 queens to start breeding in confinement, with the 

 assistance of only two or three workers, greatly 

 handicaps them, and it is improbable that 

 queens so treated can ever become the mothers 

 of very populous colonies. To give a queen 

 caught in the fields the best possible start, she 

 should be shut up and fed until she becomes broody, 

 and then introduced into a de-queened nest of her 

 own species, in which the first workers have only 

 recently emerged. It does not do to wait until 

 many workers have emerged, for then there is 

 great risk of the queen getting killed, even after 

 friendship has been established : by neglecting this 

 particular I have lost several valuable queens. 



What proved to be my most populous colony 

 of lapidarius during the season of 19 10 resulted 

 from putting two small clusters of cocoons and seven 

 large young workers with a searching queen. The 

 large family of workers that this queen produced 

 was chiefly due to the fact that she was able to 

 proceed at once, while she still possessed the energy 

 of youth, to continuous egg-laying in a prosperous 

 colony without the delays, and, more especially, the 

 exhausting labour, of gathering food, that are the 

 natural experiences of a queen. 



It ought not to be difficult to introduce a queen 

 into the commencing nest of a strange species. We 

 have seen how in nature Psithyrus queens are 



