THE QUEEN! BEE. 



53 



as if protruding from a worker cell. These latter are only con- 

 structed in cases of emergency. From some cause or other the 

 queen becomes sick, or her laying powers become deranged, or from 

 some other cause she ceases to lay. When the bees make this 

 discovery, their instinct naturally leads them to rectify the queen's 

 omission. The discovery that no eggs are being deposited by the 

 queen causes great anxiety in the hive. Instinctively they know 

 that where there are no eggs there will be no workers, and 

 where there are no workers there will be no food, and thus 

 the continuation of the home must speedily come to an end. The 

 development of queens is entirely left to the workers. After the 

 queen has laid the egg, her duty with it ceases. The workers know 

 that any or every egg or larva is not suitable for queen develop- 

 ment. Occasionally, under the stress of the impossible, cases have 

 been known where the bees have chosen a drone <egg or larva with 

 the idea of developing a queen therefrom, the reason being that 

 every other avenue of continuing their species had been closed 

 against them. This is bee ignorance, caused by anxiety. Those 

 emergency cells protruding from the workers' are constructed over 

 a larva from a similar cause, it being the best within the hive to 

 select for the purpose of developing a queen therefrom. The queens 

 evolved from such cells are always far inferior to those evolved 

 from cells constructed of the edges of the combs. 



-ALLEY QUEEN NURSERY. 



