7 
by them. The Carniolan bees are very mild tempered, much 
more prolific than either Black or Italian bees, ut very much 
given to swarming and thereby exhausting their energies; they 
are therefore undesirable when the production of honey is the 
principal consideration. 
The Queen Bee (Fig 2) has a longer body than the workers, 
and her wings are short in proportion to her 
6. Queen Bee. length; she is provided with a sting, which 
is used as a weapon of offence against rival 
queens. The queen can be easily distinguished if looked for 
before drones are hatched out, when the hive population is at. 
its lowest. Beginners, who are not familiar with the appearance 
of the queen, should try to find her when they have occasion 
to open,the hive on warm days in April or May for spring cleaning 
(186), or to ascertain the amount of food present, or for brood 
spreading (88). Great care should be taken when examining 
frames at this period (IV.), to avoid exposing brood to chills.. 
The yirgin queen usually leaves the hive to be mated by the 
drone (8) in from three to five days after her birth ; this mating 
suffices for her life, and on her return to the hive she will remain. 
in it for good, unless she leaves with a first swarm. An unmated 
queen will lay eggs that will produce drones only ; a queen must. 
be mated in order that she may lay eggs which will produce 
females, that is to say, workers; the mated queen ‘has the 
faculty of determining before she deposits eggs whether they 
shall produce males or females. In a bar-frame hive managed 
according to modern principles, the queen will, under favour- 
able circumstances, lay about 2,000 eggs per day, but‘as the num- 
ber of eggs she can lay during her life is limited, a queen laying 
eggs rapidly in a well-worked bar-frame hive soon exhausts 
herself, and should not be retained for more than two seasons ; 
whereas in the old-fashioned “ skep ” or straw hive the queen 
generally laid a very much smaller number of eggs daily, but 
continued to lay for perhaps four or five years. The queen 
begins to lay early in spring if the conditions are favourable, 
commencing in the warmest part of the hive, which is usually 
the centre portions of the centre comb surfaces, on which the 
bees congregate, thereby maintaining a high temperature. 
When, in early spring, it is noticed that, the bees are carrying 
pellets of pollen to the hive on their legs, it is a sign that the 
queen has begun to lay. 
The worker (Fig. 2), like the queen, is a female, but not being 
fully developed she is not capable of being 
7. Worker. impregnated by the male bee, and conse- 
quently cannot lay eggs which will produce 
worker or queen bees : if there is neither a queen ‘nor an occupied 
queen cell in the hive, it sometimes, but rarely in the case of the 
common English bee, occurs that one of the workers lays eggs. 
from which drones only are produced. Such bees, known as 
