6 SOUTHERN BEE CULTURE 



tile, is a question yet unsolved by scientists ; but in some unknown way she 

 passes the eggs out without their coming in contact with the germs of the 

 drone. 



There is no one who has handled bees who has not noticed the tiny 

 elongated white eggs of queens sticking endwise in the bottom of the cells, 

 in the center of the comb, or wherever the bees are rearing their young or 

 brood-nest, as it is called. The queen deposits these eggs there by inserting 

 her abdomen down into the cells, and in a moment the egg is laid, and her 

 abdomen is drawn out and inserted into another cell, and on she goes over 

 the comb, laying from one thousand to three thousand eggs each day during 

 the height of egg-laying, which is nearly twice her weight in eggs, every 

 24 hours. 



Now going back to our subject, how queens are reared, in three days after 

 the egg is laid, the temperature the bees keep in the hive, and the attention 

 given it, will hatch it, when it will be a tiny larva. At once the nurse-bees 

 deposit around and over this tiny bee the richest and most thoroughly 

 digested food possible, which food is called royal jelly. The nurse-bees 

 continue to deposit this rich food on the larva, and it continues to lavish 

 itself on it, and in about three days the bees will begin to en- 

 large the cell, and they will continue enlarging it and feeding the larva for 

 about three days more, or six days from the time the egg was hatched. By 

 this time the larva has developed wonderfully, and is lying in a mass of this 

 rich food ; and a wax cell as large as the smallest finger on an adult's hand, 

 and half as long, has been built out from the comb, extending downward and 

 capped over their futui-e mother. Now the queen enters her larval state in 

 her cell, and continues thus for about ten days ; but let us look at this 

 cell for a moment, which shows that the bees have built in with great care, 

 and that it contains something that they prize greatly. The instinct of the 

 bees has guided them in this work, and they have done the best they could, 

 and did what man can not do for them; but he can assist them in this very 

 important work, so that they will raise as fine a mother as possible (see 

 "queen-rearing"). 



Now, at the end of the ten days, or about sixteen days after the egg is 

 hatched, the young queen will gnaw her way out of the cell; but the bees 

 generally thin the cell down at the end so the queen can easily gnaw out. 

 The first four or six days after the young queen emerges from her cell she 

 will remain in the hive or the comb, crawling about over the interior of the 

 hive. At the end of this time during the middle of a warm sunny day, she 

 will be seen on the alighting-board, then she will be seen out flying around the 

 hive in a circling manner, then back into it again; but in a short time she 

 will take another flight ; and after she has taken several of these short flights 

 she will disappear in the element,, and during this flight she is encountered 

 by a drone (the male bee), and returns to the hive, and is never again 

 encountered by the drone, though she lays thousands and thousands of eggs, 

 and never again leaves her hive unless it is to go out with a swarm of 

 bees. 



