Cradle-Cells. 137 
times the queen in a hive dies or gets lost. 
Then what do you suppose the workers 
do? Why, go to work and make a new 
queen, of course. 
It is a terrible thing fora hive to be 
without a queen, and the bees are very 
unhappy when it happens. But if they 
have eggs or very young larve they need 
not despair. 
They enlarge a worker cell in which 
lies an egg or a very young larva, by tearing 
down the cells next to it. Then they feed 
the infant thus promoted to royalty upon 
queen’s food, and, lo! the little creature 
becomes a queen. 
Drones get much more royal jelly than 
workers, but no amount of feeding or 
starving will make them anything but 
drones. 
It takes all the eggs three days to hatch, 
but the queen larva attains its growth in 
five and a half days, while it takes the 
worker six, and the drone six and a half. 
