44 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE- 



stopping or impeding her progress or movements, always moving 

 to one side, or backing out of her way, as the movements of the 

 queen may require. As the queen proceeds she puts her head first into 

 a cell, as if for the purpose of satisfying herself that it is not 

 already occupied by an egg. Then withdraws, advances a few steps, 

 clutches firmly the edges of some of the cells surrounding that 

 already inspected. Lifting her body in a graceful curve, she in- 

 serts it in the cell until the abdomen is almost entirely hidden from 

 sight. For a moment she is still, then she withdraws and proceeds 

 to another cell in like manner, and so on, from cell to cell. If 

 she is a good laying queen she will attend to each cell in rotation. 

 This is one of the points in a good queen — laying evenly and 

 regularly throughout the whole of one side of a comb. In ex- 

 amining a comb of hatching brood, it is frequently to be noticed 

 that the queen appears to have selected a certain starting-point, 

 and then laid around this common centre, enlarging her sphere of 

 laying as the circle extends, and this process goes on in the same 

 cells year after year. 



The queen cell is frequently formed on the base of destroyed 

 workers' cells, by enlarging the walls thereof. The egg that has 

 been chosen from which to evolve a queen, after it is hatched and 

 been fed for a few hours, is thus surrounded by a new building. 

 The position the larva will occupy now differs. Instead of lying 

 on its back horizontally, it will hang pendulously, head downwards. 

 As the little inmate increases in bulk, so the walls of its home will 

 be enlarged to accommodate it, and large quantities of food will 

 be placed therein. When she reaches the nymph or chrysalis 

 stage, the young queen partly enshrouds herself in a cocoon, re- 

 maining hidden until she is ready to emerge, which is in about 

 sixteen days. 



Having completed her series of wonderful transformations — 

 egg to larva, larva to chrysalis, chrysalis to a perfect insect — she 

 prepares herself for exit. Six or seven days ago the workers were 

 very anxious to make her a prisoner by enclosing her within the 

 cell, now they are as solicitous for her escape. The inmate had 

 spun a cocoon over the entrance to the cell, and the bees had 

 covered it with a mixture of pollen and wax. Now, knowing that 

 her departure from the cradle is at hand, they remove that cover- 

 ing, leaving the cocoon once more exposed. The inmate, freeing 

 herself from her last moult, exercises her powerful serrated jaws 

 as a pair of shears, and works away cutting through the tough 

 covering she had been at such pains to construct a short time since. 



