254- CELLS DESERTION EXPERIMENTS. 



drone is of an irregular form, that of the working, 

 or common bee, a perfect hexagon. On the side of 

 the middle combs the cell is constructed, which is 

 destined to receive the egg, of which a young queen 

 is to be born. It has been discovered by the cu- 

 rious, that nature imparts the wonderful faculty to 

 the queen, of fore-knowing the kind of egg she is 

 about to lay, and of choosing the particular cell in 

 which it ought to be placed. A queen is known to 

 lay four or five hundred eggs in a day. Such are 

 the discoveries or opinions of practical Apiarians. 



Should the number of labouring bees be insuffi- 

 cient for the purpose of constructing the necessary 

 cells, the queen will most probably forsake the hive, 

 however well supplied with provision, and will be 

 most ready to take this step in fine weather. All, 

 or part of the stock will follow, assisting her, it is 

 averred, when wearied, from being accustomed to 

 flight, by bearing her up with their legs and wings. 

 The old remedy to prevent this desertion, was to 

 place empty combs in the hive, which does not 

 always succeed, from the disgust taken by the queen- 

 The preferable method is supposed to be, when 

 there is a hive at hand, the colony of which has died 

 during the season, to place over it the hive about to 

 be deserted. The eggs left in the borrowed hive 

 will thus be hatched, and a colony raised in suffi- 

 cient numbers. The accidental death of the queen, 

 or departure, will occasion the bees to forsake their 

 hive. Some years since, according to report, the 

 Rev. Dr. Dunbar, by a series of experiments in 

 Scotland, ascertained that when a queen bee is 

 wanting in a hive, she may be produced from the 



