166 THE PRACTICAL BEE QUIDB. 



or liberated in a colony that is being attacked by robber bees, 

 so that the queen may be mistaken for an enemy; and even 

 the queen of the colony, when manipulations are carried on 

 at unseasonable times, may be balled and hugged to death, 

 before the owner can discover the mischief and remedy it. 

 The poetic fancy of Maeterlinck who, while he admits that 

 " bees are not sentimental," will not allow the possibility of 

 individual disloyalty in the hive, attributes the balling of the 

 queen to a law which " invests her person, whoever she be, 

 with a sort of inviolability," and prohibits the direct assault 

 of any one bee — 



" No bee, it would seem, dare take on itself the horror of direct 

 and bloody regicide. Whenever, therefore, the good order and proe- 

 perity of the republic appear to demand that a queen shall die, 

 they endeavour to give her death some semblance of natural disease, 

 and by infinite subdivision of the crime, to render it almost anonymous. 

 They will, therefore, to use the picturesque expression of the apiarist, 

 ' ball ' the queenly intruder ; in other words, they will entirely sur- 

 round her with their innumerable, interlaced bodies. They will 

 thus form a sort of livinjr prison, wherein the captive is unable to 

 move ; and in this prison they will keep her for twenty-tour hours, 

 if need be, till the victim die of suilocation or hunger." — Maeterlinck. 



Huber thus describes the balling of the queen — 



" If another queen is introduced into the hive within twelve hours 

 after the removal of the reigning one, they surround, seize, and keep 

 her a very long time captive, in an impenetrable cluster, and she 

 commonly dies either from hunger or want of air. If eighteen 

 hours elapse before the substitution of a stranger-queen, she is treated, 

 at first, in the same way, but the bees leave her sooner, nor is the 

 surrounding cluster so close; they gradually disperse, and the queen 

 is at last liberated; she moves languidly, and sometimes expires in 

 a few minutes. Some, however, esc&pe in good health, and after- 

 wards reign in the hive." — Huber. 



When a valuable queen has been balled, prompt measures 

 should be taken for her release. If one endeavours to break 

 up the ball with his fingers, or with the aid of a smoker, it fre- 

 quently happens that, when the outside bees disperse, one or 

 more of those in immediate contact with the queen will sting 

 and kill her. But if the ball be dropped into a small basin of 

 water, it will fall to pieces ; the alarm will be so great that the 

 murderous design will be abandoned ; and the queen may be 

 rescued unhurt. 



297. Ute of Queen Cages. — In order to give the strange queen 

 time to acquire the scent of the colony, and to permit the bees 



