328 THE BEE-KEEPER’S MANUAL. 
tion they may receive; but three instances are recorded from 
Germany in which, by the most persevering efforts, bee-mas- 
ters have succeeded in obtaining this rare distinction from 
the royal mother, one of them noticing that the effect was 
little more than that of the prick of a needle. It is held 
by some that the queen’s sting is of use in guiding the eggs 
tothe bottom of the cells. Atany rate, in one of the above three 
instances the queen lost the entire faculty of laying for the 
rest of her existence. There are queens again that will not 
fight when challenged to a royal combat; others that will 
not start when the swarm is all ready (Dzierzon relating 
that three successive swarms were led off by young princesses 
from one of his hives in consequence of the persistent refusal 
of the proper sovereign). 
(c) Aberrations of Instinct.—Many instances of what appear 
to come under this heading, or at any rate are inexplicable 
whims, are manifested in respect to swarming. Not to speak 
of the above-cited obstinacy of the queen, the bees as a body 
sometimes neglect all preparations by means of royal cells, 
and then on the arrival of warm weather they suddenly 
rush forth and leave the remainder of the stock to begin 
these after their departure. Again, in preparing these cells, 
they have been known to omit the royal jelly; while the 
larva itself has been found with its head downwards, in which 
case, being unable to gnaw its way out of the cell, its life 
has necessarily been lost (the reversal in the case of foul 
brood is supposed to be owing to the struggles of the grub). 
The queen, too, will sometimes lay several eggs in the same 
cell, though fertile workers are more likely to be guilty of 
this freak. The occasional instances of bees murdering their 
queen may very probably be explained as the outcome of 
individual ambition begotten by partaking of royal food; but 
the desperate attempts of a queenless stock to hatch a queen 
out of a drone egg or a lump of pollen, have received no 
apology except that of Von Berlepsch, who compares such 
acts to the clutchings at straws made by a drowning man. 
5. Orthographical Variations—We trust that a brief allu- 
sion to this point may be accepted by our readers in the 
