370 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



No^^ 



hatched before her, it is one of her first and 

 foremost duties to look tliem up, and either 

 reign supreme or die in tlie attempt. If all 

 the other cells have been removed, as they 

 usually are where queens are wanted for 

 other puri)oses. slie has nothino- 1() do, but to 

 promenade over the premises, monarch of 

 all she surveys. If she ever sits down to 

 take a rest, or takes a rest in any other po- 

 sition, during the first week of her life, I 

 have never been able to discover it. She is 

 always traveling about, and this is one rea- 

 son why I am averse to caging young 

 queens, in order that we may allow several 

 to hatch in the same hive. It seems to be 

 natural for them to run about, and I believe 

 it is necessary for their well being. Several 

 years ago, I thought I had made a brilliant 

 discovery, when I succeeded in hatching all 

 the queen cells in the hive, under cups made 

 of wire cloth. The first hatched Avas al- 

 lowed to run, imtil she became fertile, and 

 began laying ; she was then removed, and 

 the next released, and so on. I think I suc- 

 ceeded in getting four laying queens from 

 the single lot of cells, all in the one liive, but 

 the bees made such desperate efforts to get 

 the obnoxious cages out of the way, and tlie 

 inmates of tlie cages to get out, tliat I gave 

 up tlie plan, after seeing several fine queens 

 die of nothing else, so far as I could see, but 

 confinement. 



But suppose she does find ;niother cell; 

 what thenV Well, she sometimes runs 

 around it awhile; sometimes, the bees tear 

 it down, and sometimes she tears it down 

 herself, with the same strong mandibles that 

 she used to cut her way out of the cell, at 

 first. She usually makes the opening in the 

 side of the cell, as shown in the accomi)any- 

 ing cut. 



CJUKEN CELL, TORX OPEN. 



Now, it is said that the qiieen immediately 

 stings her helpless immature sister, to make 

 a sure thing of her destruction ; but of this 

 I am not certain, for I never saw her in the 

 act of so doing. I have seen spots in the 

 side of the queen, that looked much as if she 

 had been stung, but I have also rescued cells 

 and put them in the lamp nursery after they 



had been torn open, and liad them mature 

 into nice queens. As these immature queens 

 are very soft, the workers will soon ])ick 

 them out of the cell, piece by piece, and I 

 have sometimes placed them in the lamp 

 nursery and lia<l tlieni mature, minus a wing 

 or leg, or whatever portion the miscliievous 

 worker had pulled a.way. I jiidge from 

 many such observations that the queen gen- 

 erally tears a hole in tlie cell, or bites into it 

 in such a way that the workers take hold of 

 it, and tear it all down, much in the way 

 they do any mutilated or broken piece of 

 comb. When (jueen cells have been cut out, 

 all the larv* that is in any way injured is at 

 once thrown out, and none but the i)erfect 

 cells preserved. Bees never fuss with crip- 

 ples, or in trying to nurse up a bee that is 

 wounded or maimed. They have just the 

 same feeling for their fellows that a locomo- 

 tive might be expected to have for a man 

 whom it had run over. They battle against 

 anything that threatens the extinction of 

 the colony, it is true, but I have never been 

 able to discover any signs of their caring for 

 one of their number, or even having com- 

 passion on their helpless brood, when it is 

 wounded and suffering. If a hole is made 

 in a queen cell, by the queen or anybody 

 else, they are very likely to tear it down and 

 throw it away. When a queen liatches, the 

 remaining cells are very soon torn down, as 

 a general thing, but there are many excep- 

 tions. When two queens ht.tch out at about 

 tiie same time, they also generally proceed 

 to kill each other; but I have never heard of 

 both being killed. 'This probably results 

 from tlie fact that they can only sting their 

 rivals in one certain way, and the one that 

 by strength or accident, gets the lucky posi- 

 tion in the combat, is stire to come off vic- 

 tor. This explains how a very inferior vir- 

 gin queen, tliat has got into the hive by ac- 

 cident, may sometimes supplant an old lay- 

 ing queen. Two queens, when thus thrown 

 together, generally fight very soon, but this 

 is not always the case. Several cases are on 

 record where they have lived in peace and 

 harmony for months, even when hatched at 

 about the same time, and it is quite common 

 to find a young q\ieen helping her mother, 

 in the egg laying duties of the hive, espe- 

 cially, when the mother is two or three years 

 old. If the season is good, and the hive pop- 

 ulous, very often, instead of a fight, they di- 

 vide up their forces in some way, and we 

 have AFTER SWAK3IING, whicli see. 



Sometimes the queen will pay no attention 

 to the remaining cells, but will let them 



