HONEY BEES. 23 
Suffice itethen to say, the queen is the mother of the 
entire family, and without a queen no swarm of bees can 
long exist. 
The time taken to perfect the three different kinds of 
bees—queen, worker and drone—varies slightly. The 
queen will mature in about sixteen days from the time 
the egg is deposited in the cell. The drone and worker 
each in about twenty days. This time is subject to some 
variation, governed by the weather, and number of bees 
in the hive, which causes the temperature of the hive to 
be greater or less. A high temperature will forward, 
while a low temperature will retard, the maturing of the 
brood. 
Swarms with healthy prolific queens increase rapidly 
through the spring and summer. The queen at this 
season will deposit from one thousand to fifteen hundred 
egosperday. Some writers estimate higher. To secure 
so large a number of eggs, and consequent increase of 
bees, we must have healthy prolific queens to start with, 
and offer every available facility to encourage the desired 
increase. How to do this successfully, is shown further 
on. 
If we wish to secure a good harvest of honey, we 
must have the bees to collect it, and we must have them 
at the proper time, viz: when the harvest is ready. To 
do this, we must encourage breeding to the utmost in 
early spring. 
Early in the spring the queen enlarges the circle con- 
taining the brood ; perhaps, if the stock was very strong, 
