348 fAssEaiBLT 



At a certain age she loses these fine colors and the large form j 

 of her bally. In her fifth year her legs are still yellow, her body i 

 a little longer, but very black, her wings dry and fringed. Now i 

 wax makers are taken often to be old queens, so much are they i 

 like them. The belly of the queen diminishes in size much after .1 

 laying male eggs, or when her laying is lessened by any cause j 

 whatever. j 



7th. Her longevity. — She lays few eggs in her fifth year, and I 

 she is said to live seven years. I 



j 

 8th. Her moral character. — She is called queen on account of j 



her great influence over her children. When she goes out they ' 



all follow. If they want to emigrate, and she will not leave her >! 



lodgings, they all come back to her. She commands the swarm j 



to go to where she pleases. If she cannot take wing, but is tor- j 



mented with the necessity of founding a new colony, she walks ; 



along the ground to some place, with tlie bees all following wher- I 



ever she goes. ■ 



I 



9th. Her song. — Some days before her departure she sings a • 

 song quite like the grasshopper's. She repeats it frequently at J 

 intervals, while profound silence is kept in the hive. \ 



Some bee raisers say that she sings only upon the departure of 

 a second swarm. Others say it is owing to young queens, who i 

 are prisoners, demanding leave to quit their cells. 



10. Her marriage.— In one day after her birth the young queen j 



leaves the hive, glances into the air, where she couples with a | 



mate, and in twenty-flve to thirty minutes returns to the hive fe- ;i 

 cundated for life. Forty six hours after this marriage she begins 



to lay a countless progeny. During the first eleven months she ' 



lays none but workingmen's eggs, about sixty tliousand a year. 1 



At the end of the eleven months she begins to lay eggs of j 



males, and continues it for twenty or thirty days, and during this 'i 



period she does not lay one worker's egg, but every three or four I 



days she deposits a queen egg in a royal cell. ^ 



It is an old queen that always goes off in swarming. . -j 



