238 THE BEE NATION. 



before reaching the shelter of home. If they are picked up 

 and put into the hive the same note of joy is heard. 



Sometimes the queen does not obtain the object of her 

 wedding flight, but has to return with the marriage uncon- 

 summated. The flight is then repeated on the following day. 

 If all has been successful and she returns impregnated, the 

 workers, which at once recognise her condition, receive her 

 with every sign of delight, and lead her within the hive, 

 pressing round, caressing, brushing, cleaning her, and 

 showing her every sign of respect. For an impregnated 

 queen is, in the eyes of the bees, quite a different and a far 

 more to be reverenced creature than is an unimpregnated or 

 virgin. While they treat the latter with indifference, the 

 former, as we have said, is the object of the tenderest care 

 and attention. She is at once given a suite of from ten to 

 twenty bees, which follow her everywhere, and stipply all her 

 wants. 



Arrived within the hive, the queen after two or three 

 days, when the first wax cells are ready, begins the chief 

 and most important business of her life, egg-laying. In 

 addition to her regular court, she is generally surrounded 

 by a whole troop of workers which manifest their content by 

 bending their heads before her, dancing up and down, licking 

 and stroking her, and so on. Perhaps this crowding round 

 her has also the object of keeping her warm on cool days, 

 for the queen requires a tolerably high rate of temperature 

 during egg-laying (not less than 10 to 12 R.) 



The queen is able, during the rich foraging time of a 

 populous hive, to lay some thousands of eggs daily, and 

 actually lays daily some hundreds up to a thousand, so that the 

 number of eggs laid during the summer may be twenty, 

 thirty, or forty thousand. She prudently regulates her egg- 

 laying by the amount of provisions collected in the hive, as 

 well as by the number of the inhabitants, and the plentiful- 

 ness of food. Thus in a weak hive and a cold season she 

 only lays a few hundred eggs daily, but in populous hives 

 and abundance of food from two to three thousands ! The 

 queen in her egg-laying is, like all bees, a great stickler for 

 cleanliness ; she feels with her sensitive flexible antennas all 

 over the interior of a cell in which she is going to deposit 

 an egg, in order to see if it is empty, brushed, polished, 

 properly swept, and generally fitted to receive one. If this 



