BREEDING. 109 



SO arrange that the queen shall always have more room than 

 she actually requires for the depositing- of her eggs, and that 

 the bees shall have, at the same time, sufficient room for the 

 storing of honey. This is what is referred to by the frequent 

 advice to "give room in advance of requirements," so that 

 congestion shall not provoke swarming, and thus disorganise, 

 in the middle of the honey flow, the work of the colony. (216), 



188. Drone-breeding Queens Until the approach of the 



swarming season, the queen lays only impregnated, i.e., worker 

 eggs : after which drone cells are prepared, and in them she 

 deposits unimpregnated, i.e., drone eggs. A queen in her fourth 

 or fifth year will sometimes, however, become a " drone- 

 breeder": the supply of fertilising material in the spermatheca 

 (45) having become exhausted, she is no longer able to fertilise 

 her eggs ; and, though she may continue to lay in both worker 

 and drone cells, the produce from both will be drones only — 

 dwarf drones, if reared in the cells intended for worker larvae. 

 Such a queen should be supplanted at once ; in fact, after her 

 second year, a queen ceases to be profitable, and her place 

 should be taken by a young, fertile queen (281-2). A hive 

 which shows too large a proportion of drone brood should be 

 re-queened without delay. 



189. Age Of Larvae. — From Dr. E. F. Phillips, in Gleanings, 



we have the following data 

 for judging the ages of 

 larvae. Just hatched, a 

 straight line from head to 

 tail is Jth the diameter of 



\'» ^ ^^ '^ ^<^ the cell ; one day old, \rd, 



ah e d ^^^ form semi-circular ; two 



pjg. gi days, head touches tail in 



EGGS AND BEOOD. a Circle nearly 5 the cell 



o. Eggs, natural size; b. Eggs magnified; diameter; three days, it 

 c. Larva, natural size; d, Nymph, natural occupies ^'th; four days, it 

 "^^- fills the entire diameter of 



the cell. To be able to tell the age of egg (183) and larva is 

 very desirable, esperiallv when arrangements are being made 

 for queen rearing. (293). 



190. Worker Brood — During the first three days the germ 

 feeds upon the substance of the egg ; and, hatching on the 

 fourth day into a small white grub, it is supplied by the nurses 

 with a food elaborated for the purpose in the stomachs of the 

 nurses. After about three or four days more, a mixture of 

 semi-digested honey and pollen is added to the food. On the 

 ninth day from the laying of the egg, in the case of worker 

 brood, the cell, well supplied with food, is sealed with a porous 

 capping consisting of a mixture of wax and pollen ; the larva 

 (Fig. 81, c) spins a cocoon, casts off one skin after another. 



if 



