*&V THE BEE NATIOX. 



to inflict on her ; she tears open the royal cells, and 

 smothers the inmates. The working bees only interfere 

 with her so long as there are enough bees to form a new 

 swarm. In this case she is compelled to leave the hive in 

 the same way as was her predecessor, and in this way, 

 during the course of a single summer, or only a few weeks, 

 three, four, or more swarms are ^ent off one after the other. 

 They become, naturally, continually weaker, and are called 

 secondary swarms. When the hive has by this repeated 

 swarming become sufficiently thinned, the working bees no 

 longer tend and guard the young queens in the former 

 fashion, but let them fight each other without hindrance, 

 until only a single one remains. If a strange queen be 

 placed in a hive already provided with a chief, she is at 

 once stung or smothered to death by the working bees. 



Sometimes it happens that in consequence of these fights 

 and by often repeated swarming all the queens in a hive 

 have disappeared, and this, as already said, means the 

 necessary destruction of the hive if the want cannot be 

 supplied. The bees become restless, cease working and scatter. 

 The younger ones fly away, the elder remain in the hive to 

 die. The bee-masters know that the queen bee is dead by 

 the cessation of all life in and around the hive, and by 

 hearing in the interior a dull or sad complaining noise. 

 But, remarkable to say, these striking changes do not take 

 place when at the time at which the hive has become queen- 

 less, there are either royal pupae from which new queens 

 will shortly emerge, or when there are in some of the cells 

 of the hive working bee young, not more than three days 

 old, for the bei s know that they can by special treatment 

 develop other new queens from such working bee eggs or 

 larva?, and indeed they manage this important bringing up 

 business with the care and cleverness which distinguish all 

 their actions. They first select the young working bee 

 larvae which are to be given the nursing necessary to change 

 them into queens, and widen into royal cells the cells in 

 which they are, by pulling down the contiguous partition 

 walls. Then three neighboring cells are torn away and the 

 larvjR and food ia them carried away. A cylindrical en- 

 closure is next built all round, whereby the rhomb-shaped 

 floor is kept up. for by its destruction the cells and larvae of 

 the opposite side would suffer. The larva remains for three 



