QDBBN REAHINa AND INTRODUCTION. I69 



or careless manipulations of frames are accountable for the 

 crushing and death of many queens (182). When they leave 

 the hive to meet the drones, some queens, either through some 

 defect of their wings hindering their return, or through the 

 assaults of birds, or of strong winds, fail to reach their homes 

 again. By far the largest number of lost queens become lost 

 through their inability to recognise their own hives, when 

 returning from their wedding flight (147). And this disaster 

 is frequently due to the habit of using hives so close together, 

 and so similar in their make, colour, and situation, that, 

 although the virgin queen takes all due precautions to mark 

 the position of her own hive before her flight (21), it is next 

 to impossible for her to distinguish it from the others when 

 she returns, and, entering a strange hive by mistake, she is 

 immediately killed. This is a fact of sufficient importance to 

 point the necessity for keeping careful watch over all casts and 

 swarmed stocks until one is satisfied of the mating and laying 

 of the queens ; and, also, to lead to the re-arrangement of any 

 apiary (391) in which the conditions are such as favour the loss 

 of newly-mated queens. And it should be noted that, although 

 a colony deprived of its queen can, in certain circumstances, 

 supply the loss (17), if the loss occur when there are neither 

 eggs nor larva; under tliree days old in the combs (as in the 

 case of a swarmed stock, or a cast), a new queen cannot be 

 raised, and the colony, if left to itself, must dwindle and 

 perish. 



284. Signs of Queenlessness — When a colony has become 

 queenless, the fact may soon be discovered by observing the 

 conduct of the bees. They hurry about the hive, in' and 

 out, and over the porch, sides, and roof, as if in search 

 of their lost mother. This may continue for tv/o or three days ; 

 after which work is resumed, but, in a listless, half-hearted 

 way : the bees returning from the fields loiter about the alight- 

 ing board, with little apparent anxiety to enter the hive, and 

 a general air of indifference prevails in the colony. In spring, 

 they carry in little or no pollen, there being no Ijrood to feed. 

 In late autumn and winter, they permit the drones to remain 

 in the hive. Such signs as these will indicate to the owner 

 that something is wrong with the colony; and, if on examin- 

 ing the frames he finds no queen, and neither eggs nor brood, 

 at a time when they ought to be present, or only the eggs or 

 brood of a drone-breeder (188.200), he will know that he can 

 save the colony only by taking measures for re-queening it, 

 or by uniting it with another stock. 



285. Nucleus Hives. — The proper time to begin preparations 

 for queen rearing is in the winter, when, a supply of nucleus 



