132 Hillside. 



bag nor sting. Beyond fertilising the newly hatched queens 

 they appear to take no part in the internal economy of the 

 hive, except, perhaps, that they help to keep up its tempera- 

 ture. They are allowed to remain in the hive until the 

 season for the collection of honey is over, and then they are 

 turned out. In the autumn months they may frequently be 

 seen on outhouses and in similar positions, but they soon die 

 from exposure. 



Each hive contains but one queen or fully developed 

 female, and she is larger than the drones or workers. 

 Generally speaking the queen, if a year or more old, is the 

 mother of all the bees in the hive. During the height of the 

 season she lays about two thousand eggs in twenty-four hours, 

 so that she can in no way be considered lazy. When a hive 

 is by any means deprived of its queen the workers immedi- 

 ately set to work to make one. To make one ! you exclaim. 

 Yes! They select a cell in which an egg has been laid, 

 which under ordinary conditions would have produced a 

 worker, flien they gnaw away the partitions of the adjoining 

 cells, and thus enlarge the one in which the egg was placed, 

 until it is about as large as three ordinary cells. Now it has 

 become a royal cell. As soon as the grub hatches the 

 workers supply it with a milky food, called by bee-keepers 

 " Eoyal jelly." This regal state of feeding is kept up until 

 the grub changes to a pupa, and in due time the queen bee 

 emerges. So highly nutritious is this special food that 

 although her metamorphosis occupies fewer days than that 

 of the workers, she is considerably larger. She has a long, 

 well-developed abdomen, but is without pollen-sacs on the 

 thighs, and is more brightly coloured than her subjects. 

 Soon she appears at the entrance of the hive, flies out a 



