ONE YEAR AMONG THE BEES. 123 



produce a queen. Natural cells, as we call them, are produced only 

 during the swarming season, and while the bees have the swarming 

 fever. There is no difference in the cells, nor in the queens they pro- 

 duce, but usually there is a difference in the locality on the combs 

 which these queen-cells occupy. In building queen-cells in natural 

 swarming, the bees, having the entire work under their own manage- 

 ment, select the edges at the ends and bottom of the combs, usually, 

 to construct these cells, and also in uneven and broken places in the 

 combs, and these cells are scarcely ever found on a smooth surface 

 near the center of the combs, as in the illustration ( fig. 19 ). I men- 

 tion this fact, so that, if you are hunting the combs for queen-cells in 

 swarming time, you will not be misled by the location of same. 



FIG. 19. Queen-cells and queen rearing. 



There is no difference between an egg deposited by the queen to 

 produce a worker bee and an egg deposited by her to produce a queen ; 

 they are one and the same. They are also the same after the egg 

 hatches into larva ; but at this point the change begins to occur ; and 

 if you give a queenless colony that has no young brood of its own a 

 frame of comb containing worker-eggs or larvae as usually found in a 

 hive, they will at once begin to construct queen-cells around a few of 

 these eggs, just as you see in figure 19, and in course of time pro- 

 duce as many young queens. This change is brought about by the 

 bees changing the shape of the cell, and also administering a different 

 kind of food and especial care to the Iarva3. In extreme cases bees 

 will take larvae three or four days old and change them to queens, but 

 such queens are not considered the best. 



Now, on the above plan, you have our method of artificial queen 

 rearing. Queens may thus be produced any time during the suLimer, 

 spring and autumn included, or while warm weather continues. First 



