bees are like our domestic animals; if we treat them kindly they will 

 usually treat us in the same way. 



This is especially true of the queen, who is the largest and most 

 important bee in the -hive. Of course, then, like other queens, she 

 must have a larger and finer house to live in than those her subjects 

 have. ]f you should examine the living room of the queen bee you 

 would find that it is nearly four times as large as those of the other 

 bees. It is about the size and shape of a peanut and is usually placed 

 on the edge of the comb. 



The queen is the mother bee and lays all the eggs. How many do 

 you suppose she can lay in a day. One writer tells us that he had a 

 queen bee that sometimes laid more than three thousand eggs in a 

 single day, and that she continued to lay at intervals for more than 

 five years. Of course, there are some seasons of the year when she; 

 does not lay so many, and other seasons when she stops laying alto- 

 gether, but it does not take long for her family to become so large 

 that the hive will no longer contain it. What do you suppose happens 

 then? They prepare to found a new colony, or in other words, they 

 "swarm." Have you never seen a cloud of bees come out of the hive 

 and light upon some tree or biish near by, then after a while fly away? 

 If the bee farmer has been watching them and is familiar with their 

 habits he has a new home ready for them, but he sometimes has to use 

 a good deal of ingenuity to get them to go into it. If he has not been 

 prepared for their swarming they frequently get away from him alto- 

 gether and fly off into the woods. 



Now, why do you suppose they lighted on the first tree or bush? It 

 was that they might be sure their queen was with them. A swarm 

 will never permanently leave a hive without a queen bee. , If they find 

 that she is not with them, they will return to the old hive, wait for a 

 time and then make another attempt. 



But, you say, if the queen goes with the new colony, who is to gov- 

 ern the subjects she leaves behind? The workers have prepared for 

 that. They would not allow her to leave them unless they had her 

 successor ready to take her place. An egg has been laid in the queen's 

 cell, and the young, larval queen has been fed upon what is called 

 "Eoyal Jelly." This food is very much richer than that fed to the 

 workers or the drone larvce, and it is this that causes the difference 

 in the size and structure of a queen. In case of an accident to their 

 old queen, the bees have a curious way of getting a new one very 

 quickly. The drones select three cells which contain larvm, knock 

 out the partition walls, kill two of the lanm and feed the third on the 

 Royal Jelly. 



