HAVING AN EXCEPTIONALL1 STRONG SWARM WEIGHING 11 lbs— 55,000 BEES. 



WOODLAND STORIES 



THE QUEEN'S FLIGHT 



By S. L. BENSUSAN 

 With Photographs by G. E. Green 



CONSCIOUSNESS had hardly been 

 hers in the fi\-e days that were 

 passed. In the form of a grub 

 such httle recognition of outside in- 

 fluences as came her way was no more 

 th.an the pleasant sense of wants sup- 

 plied. She was in a cell depending 

 solitary from the edge of the comb, 

 larger than the ordinary cells and shaped 

 roughly like an acorn. Into the mouth 

 of this cell in those brief days of con- 

 sciousness the nurse bees were busy 

 emptying a rich store of bee milk made 

 up of pollen and honey, that they them- 

 selves had digested before they gave it 

 up to their nurshng. There was more 

 than the young grub could receive; it 



overflowed into the cell where she was 

 spinning the silken shroud that was to 

 wrap her for more than a fortnight's 

 sleep. The nurse bees sealed down the 

 mouth of her cell, but there was a generous 

 allowance of space and air, and in those 

 blind depths, which no human eye can 

 picture, the Queen Bee grew and woke to 

 a sense of anger and excitement that 

 expressed itself in a shrill cry. 



" Let me out," she shrilled, " I am a 

 Queen Bee, and there are others in this 

 hi\e. Let me go that I may do battle 

 with them." All round her the guard 

 was stationed, she remained a prisoner. 

 But far above her, in a corner of the hive, 

 came an answer to her challenge, the 

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