LOSS OF THE QUEEN. 213 



CHAPTER XI. 



LOSS OF THE QUEEN. 



THAT the Queen-Bee is often lost, and that her colony 

 will be ruined unless such a calamity is seasonably remedied, 

 ought to be familiar facts to every bee-keeper. 



Queens sometimes die of disease or old age, when there 

 is no brood to supply their loss. Few, however, perish 

 under such circumstances ; for either the bees build royal 

 cells, aware of their approaching end, or they die so sud- 

 denly as to leave young brood behind them. Queens are 

 not only much longer lived (p. 58) than the workers, but 

 are usually the last to perish hi any fatal casualty. As 

 many die of old age, if their death did not ordinarily 

 occur under favorable circumstances, it would cause, 

 yearly, the loss of a very large number of colonies. As 

 they seldom die when their strength is not severely taxed 

 in breeding, drones are usually on hand to impregnate 

 their successors.* 



Young queens are sometimes born with wings so imper- 

 fect that they cannot fly (p. 39) ; and they are often so 

 injured in their contests with each other, or by the rude 

 treatment they receive when driven from the royal cells 

 (p. 121), that they cannot leave the hive for impregnation. 



* In preparing my stocks for "Winter, I found on the 21st of October, 1856 

 two which had sealed queens. As the drones were not killed, in some of the hives, 

 until after the 1st of November, these queens might have been impregnated, if the 

 weather had not become very cold. When examined on the 21st day of February, 

 these stocks had each a few sealed drones and larvae, while weaker stocks had 

 much brood. The following is an extract from Prof. Leidy's description of these 

 queens : " Their ovaries were filled with eggs, from a mere point to such as meas- 

 ured four-fifths of a line long, and one-eighth of a lino broad. Their spermathecaa 

 were filled with mncoid, granular matter, and epithelial cells, and did not contain 



