248 A Modem Bee-Farm 



never be taken ; but a bee-keeper especially, though his work 

 is often laborious, has a holiday every day ; . for is he not 

 always in the open air, gaining health and strength, as well as 

 having constant pleasure in studying the wonderful works of 

 Nature ? 



Many writers have fallen into the error of supposing that 

 young queens often commence by laying a number of drone 

 as well as worker eggs. In nuclei it is frequently to be 

 noticed that many cells contain drone larvae, but a little more 

 careful observation will always show that this is the result of 

 fertile workers, which often continue to deposit eggs after the 

 young queen is in full work. I have even had these pests 

 start laying side by side with a queen after she had been at 

 work long enough to hatch her first batch of brood. The 

 queen was a Carniolan crossed with black drone ; the fertile 

 worker was from a Ligurian queen crossed by Cyprian drone, 

 the resulting drones being very yellow. The yellow bees had 

 been united' to the stock to strerigtheiL it, and without this 

 proof it might have been considered that the queen had pro- 

 duced the drones. Again, a queen does not deposit eggs until 

 her ovaries are developed. 



While I have had ample evidence to show that bees are 

 able to retard the development of both eggs and larvae by 

 withholding food ; where a colony has beenqueenless for more 

 than ten days, the presence of uncapped larvae, whether in 

 queen cell cups or ordinary cells, may be put down to the- 

 action of fertile workers. 



Many bee-keepers appear to understand that my non- 

 swarming plan can be carried out in a single ten or eleven- 



