PnTSIOLOGT AND BREEDING. 33 



WHEN DRONES AIIE SEABED. 



Whenever the liive is well supplied with honey and bees, 

 eggs are deposited in the drone cells. 



WHEN QTJEENS AGE REARED IN SWABMING HIVES. 



Also, at the proper season, when the hive becoxnes 

 crowded with bees, and honey is plenty, the preparations 

 for young queens commence. As the first step towards 

 swarming, from one to twenty royal cells are begun, and 

 when about half completed, the queen (if the conditions 

 continue favorable,) will deposit eggs in them.* These 

 are glued fast by one end like those for the workers. 

 When hatched, the little worm is supplied with a superabun- 

 dance of food; this appears from the fact that I have 

 frequently found a quantity remaining in the cell after the 

 queen had left. The consistence of this substance is about 

 like cream, the color some lighter, or just tinged with yel- 

 low. K it were thin like water, or even honey, I cannot 

 imagine how it could be made to stay in the upper end of 

 an inverted cell of that size, in such quantities as are put 

 in. Sometimes a cell of this kind will contain this food, 

 and no worm to feed upon it. I surmise that the bees 

 have compounded more than their present necessities re- 

 quire, and stored it there to have it ready ; also, that being 

 there, all might know for whom it was designed. 



The taste is said to be " more pungent," than that of 

 the food given to the worker, and the difference in food 

 is assumed to change the bee from a worker to a queen. 

 It can not be the shape of the cell, because I have known 

 queens to be raised in cells that could not be distinguished 

 from worker cells, by ordinary observers. 



*I do not assert this positively. All my observations indicate it, yet I hai e 

 never seen her in the act. 



2* 



