74 BEES. 



It is a singular fact, also, that the queen is made, 

 not born. If the entire population of Spain or Great 

 Britain were the offspring of one mother, it might be 

 found necessary to hit upon some device by which a 

 royal baby could be manufactured out of an ordinary 

 one, or else give up the fashion of royalty. All the 

 bees in the hive have a common parentage, and the 

 queen and the worker are the same in the egg and in 

 the chick ; the patent of royalty is in the cell and in 

 the food ; the cell being much larger, and the food a, 

 peculiar stimulating kind of jelly. In certain contin- 

 gencies, such as the loss of the queen with no eggs 

 in the royal cells, the workers take the larva of an 

 ordinary bee, enlarge the cell by taking in the two 

 adjoining ones, and nurse it and stuff it and coddle it, 

 till at the end of sixteen days it comes out a queen. 

 But ordinarily, in the natural course of events, the 

 young queen is kept a prisoner in her cell till the 

 old queen has left with the swarm. Later on, the un- 

 matched queen is guarded against the reigning queen, 

 who only wants an opportunity to murder every royal 

 scion in the hive. At this time both the queens, the 

 one a prisoner and the other at large, pipe defiance 

 at each other, a shrill, fine, trumpet-like note that any 

 ear will at once recognize. This challenge, not being 

 allowed to be accepted by either party, is followed, in a 

 day or two, by the abdication of the reigning queen ; she 

 leads out the swarm, and her successor is liberated by 

 her keepers, who, in her time, abdicates in favor of the 

 next younger. When the bees have decided that no 

 more swarms can issue, the reigning queen is allowed 

 to use her stiletto upon her unhatched sisters. Cases 

 have been known where two queens issued at the 

 same time, when a mortal combat ensued, encouraged 



