THE AGE OF QUEENS. 3 



marvel as the shortness of time they are in their cradle- 

 cells. Only fourteen days for the process of developing 

 small eggs into princesses of the blood ! A worker is 

 twenty-one days in the cell, and a drone twenty-four days. 

 Queens are perfected in ten days less time than drones. 

 The mystery of this is beyond OTir depth ; but the fact 

 indicates the value of the presence of the queens in their 

 hives. When a queen is accidentally kiHed, or dies un- 

 expectedly, or is taken from a hive, as in artificial swarm- 

 ing, the bees have the power to make another. They 

 take an egg meant for a worker from a common cell, 

 where, if undisturbed, it would be developed into a 

 worker in twenty-one days, and place it in a royal cell, 

 and there convert it into a queen in fourteen days. In 

 the royal ceU the egg is developed into a bee — different in 

 size and colour, perfect every way, and perfect in seven 

 days' less time than it would otherwise have been if 

 left in a common worker-cell. This is an exceedingly 

 interesting point in bee-history, and a wise provision of 

 nature. It is a fact established beyond dispute that bees 

 have the power of rearing queens from common eggs. It 

 may be asked how they accomplish this, and by what 

 means. The power seems to be in a substance termed 

 " royal jeUy," which has a milky, gelatinous appearance. 

 Whenever an egg is set in a royal cell, the bees place 

 around it some of this mUky-lite substance, and soon 

 after a little worm or grub may be seen floating on it, and 

 by it this grub is fed. What this royal jelly is, we do not 

 know — neither can we tell where it comes from. If o writer, 

 we think, has ventured to describe how or where it is manu- 

 factured or obtained. If an analytical chemist would ever 

 Kke to examine this substance, we would gladly furnish 

 him with a thimbleful of it at the swarming season — taking 

 it, of course, from the cells in which it may be deposited. 

 Seven days after eggs have been deposited in royal 



