THOUSAND ANSWERS 193 



A. A virgin queen looks very much like a laying queen, only 

 her abdomen is smaller. 



Q. Hovir long after the prime swarm issues before the first 

 virgin will begin laying? 

 A. About seventeen days. 



Queen-Cells. — Q. Are queen-cells all at the end or at the bot- 

 tom of the combs? 



A. Bees generally build queen-cells along the lower edges of 

 the combs. But if there is a hole, or some irregularity of surface 

 in a comb, thus making room for a queen-cell, the bees do not 

 despise the opportunity. In rare cases they will even build a cell 

 separate from the comb on one of the bars of a frame. If a colony 

 becomes suddenly queenless, they build cells over young worker- 

 larvae, converting them into young queens, and these cells are 

 often built right in the center of a brood-comb where there is no 

 hole or irregularity of surface. 



Q. Which end of a queen-cell is the bottom — the end that a 

 queen hatches out of, or the end where the egg is laid? 



A. The top is the bottom, always. Sounds tangled, doesn't it? 

 You see, it's like a teacup; when the cup stands full of tea, the 

 bottom of the cup is toward the ground; and then when the cup 

 is turned upside down the name "bottom" still belongs to the same 

 part we called the "bottom" before, although the bottom now 

 points skyward. The bees build queen-cells upside down, and so 

 the bottom of the cell, like the bottom of the teacup when turned 

 upside down, always points skyward. (To be sure, in rare in- 

 stances, a queen-cell lies horizontally, but that occurs so seldom 

 that it doesn't count.) Then, when we speak of the other end of 

 the cell, the illustration of the teacup fails. For when a teacup is 

 upside down, the part that is downward is still called the top; 

 but the part of a queen-cell that is downward is not the top, but 

 "the lower end." So the egg is laid in the bottom of the cell, and 

 the young queen emerges from the lower end. Absurd way of 

 talkin, isn't it? But please don't blame me; I wasn't born when 

 beekeepers agreed to talk that way about a queen-cell. 



Q. If the queenless bees should make a queen-cell, and place 

 therein an egg, how long before the cell will be capped, and how 

 long before there is a full-fledged queen? 



A. In eight or nine days from the time the egg is laid the cell 

 should be capped. But instead of an egg, queenless bees will 

 start with a larvae two days or so of age, and it ought to be capped 



