leaning (190), or to ascertain the amount of food present, or 

 3r brood spreading (88). Great care should be taken when 

 xamining frames at this period, to avoid exposing brood to 

 hills. The virgin queen usually leaves the hive to be mated 

 y the drone (8) in from three to five days after her birth ; this 

 Qating suffices for her life, and on her return to the hive she 

 /ill remain in it for good, unless she leaves with a first swarm. 

 in unmated queen will lay eggs that will produce drones 

 nly ; a queen must be mated in order that she may lay eggs 

 i^hich will produce females, that is to say, workers ; the mated 

 :ueen has the faculty of determining before she deposits eggs 

 i^hether they shall produce males or females ; queens are pro- 

 uced from eggs laid by a mated queen in worker cells, but 

 ?hich are transferred by the bees from the worker cell to a 

 ueen cell, and thereafter fed upon special food called ' ' Eoyal 

 elly." Queens are also produced from female larvae, round 

 vhich the bees build queen cells, the larvae then being fed on 

 ' Eoyal Jelly." In a bar-frame hive managed according 

 o modern principles, the queen will, under favourable 

 lircumstances, lay about 2,000 eggs per day, but as the 

 lumber of eggs she can lay during her life is limited, a queen 

 aying eggs rapidly in a well-worked bar-frame hive soon 

 ixhausts herself, and should not be retained for more than two 

 easons ; whereas in the old-fashioned ' ' skep ' ' or straw hive 

 he queen generally laid a very much smaller number of eggs 

 iaily, but continued to lay for perhaps four or five years. The 

 [ueen begins to lay early in spring if the conditions are favour- 

 ible, commencing in the warmest part of the hive, which is 

 isually the centre portions of the centre comb surfaces, on 

 vhich the bees congregate, thereby maintaining a high tem- 

 )erature ; consequently new frames of comb or foundation 

 ihould always be inserted in the centre of the brood nest. 

 iVhen, in early spring, it is noticed that the bees are carrying 

 jellets of pollen to the hive on their legs, it is a sign that the 

 [ueen has begun to lay. 



[•he worker (Fig. 2), like the queen or mother-bee, is a 

 female, but unlike her, has not been 

 7. Worker. cradled in a queen cell nor fed with the 



special food called "Eoyal Jelly," and 

 herefore remains through life undeveloped as to the power of 

 lying eggs : if there is neither a queen nor an occupied queen 

 ell in the hive, it sometimes, but rarely in the case of the 

 ommon English bee, occurs that one of the workers lays 

 ggs from which drones only are produced. Such bees, 

 :nown as "fertile workers," are most undesirable occupants 

 f a hive ; they are rarely found in hives occupied by 

 ueens. AH the work of the hive is performed by the 

 7orker bees : they make wax, which is secreted from 

 heir bodies, build the cells, fill them with honey which they 

 lone collect, feed and nurse the young brood, collect pm- 

 lolis, a resinous substance which they find on trees, and which 

 s used for closing chinks and holes, defend the hive from 



