1878. 



GLEANINGS ES BEE CULTUEE. 



367 



QXTZiEN'S. The most important person- 

 age in the hive is the queen or mother bee. 

 She is called the mother bee because she is, 

 in reality, the mother of all the bees in the 

 hive. So much has already been said of 

 queens, in artificial swar^uxg. drones, 

 and QUKEX rearing, that I presume our 

 ABC class are already pretty well acquaint- 

 ed with her majesty, as she is frequently 

 designated. 



If you deprive a colony of theii" queen, the 

 bees will set to work and raLse another, so 

 long as they have "any worker larva:- in the 

 hive with which to do it. This is the rule, 

 but there are some exceptions i the excep- 

 tions are so few. however, that it is safe to 

 assume that a queen of some kind is present 

 in the hive, whenever they refuse to start 

 queen cells from larva? of a proper age. 



What do I mean by a queen of some kiudy 

 Well. I shall have to tell you that bees, es- 

 pecially when deprived of their queens un- 

 naturally, and broken up into small colonies 

 or nuclei, us beginners are very apt to have 

 them, in order to raise a queen, often select 

 a worker larva so old that the queen raised 

 from it is about half worker, and half queen. 



LMPEItFECTLY DEVELOPED (:^UEEXS. 



Such queens aie small, usually dark in col- 

 or, and will sometimes become fertilized, and 

 lay eggs for a little while (all the way from 

 a Aveek to several months i. but they are nev- 

 er protitable. Sometimes they will not lay 

 at all. but will remain in a colony all through 

 the season, neither doing any good, nor per- 

 mitting any other queen to be either inti'o- 

 duced or reared. A wingless queen, or on*- 

 with bad wings, will inoduce the same re- 

 sult. The remedy is to hunt them out. and 

 remove them. Where they are so near like 

 a worker bee as to make it hard to distin- 

 guish them, they may often be detected by 

 the peculiar behavior of the bees toward 

 them. See how to find a queen. 



So far as I have been able to make out. 

 these half worker queens are the result of 

 trying to raise a queen Avheu there are too 

 few bees, or when the larva? with which they 

 are obliged to rear a queen is too old; that 

 is, too nearly ready to seal up. "Where they 

 can do no better, they will undertake to rear 

 a queen from larva only one day before 

 sealing up: it will be. at this age. almost full 

 size, being 6 days from the time the egg was 

 laid. They enlarge the cell, dose it with the 

 royal jelly, and fi-om that time onward, it 

 has the care given a qiieen from the egg. I 

 have watched such queens, when they first 

 came fiom the cell, and some of them were 



little, if any. different from a common work- 

 er: others would have the body a little more 

 elongated, and a peculiar taper, or slimness, 

 that, to a practiced eye. invariably dLstin- 

 guishes the queen from the worker. 



HOAV A AVORKER EGG IS 3IADE TO PRODUCE 

 A QUEEN. 



This is a question often asked, and it is 

 one that puzzles me about as much to an- 

 swer, as any question a visitor can ask. I 

 cannot promise to tell you all ab^ut it. but I 

 will tell you all I know abiut it. We will 

 first get a frame of eggs, as we did in study- 

 ing BEES, but we will varj- the experiment, 

 by putting it in a colony having no queen. 

 The minute eggs Avill hatch into larvae as be- 

 fore, but about as soon as they begin to 

 hatch, if you look carefully, you Avill see 

 some of the cells supplied Avith a greater 

 profusion of the milky food than others. 

 Later, these cells will begin to be enlarged, 

 and soon, at the expense of the adjoining 

 ones. These are queen cells, and they are 

 something like the cup of an acorn in shape, 

 and usually occupy about the space of three 

 ordinary cells. In the drawing below, you 

 will see ceUs in different stages of groArth. 







f'm^* 



QUEEN CELLS. 



At A. is a ceU just being converted into a 

 queen cell ; at B. one where the thin walls 

 are extended so as to fonn a queen cell prop- 

 er, almost ready to seal up: at C. a cell just 

 sealed. This occurs at just about 8 days 

 from the time the egg was laid. In 8 days 

 more. K' days in all from the time the egg 

 was laid, the queen Avill hatch out. a perfect 

 insect. Xow bear in mind exactly what I 

 say. or you will get confused. If. instead of 

 eggs, larvae (3 days old is given the bees, they 

 will rear a queen, and. in this case, she will 

 hatch in only 10 days after the larvae was 

 given them. These 10 day queens may be 

 just as good as any. but to be on the safe 

 side. I would prefer giving them larvte one 

 or two days younger, that they might have 

 the benefit of this excess of food and larger 

 cell, during the whole of their larval period. 



