26 



Texas Department op Agriculture. 



Queens are reared from the same kind of eggs that worker bees de- 

 velop from, i. e. fertilized eggs, the difference between the two re- 

 sulting from a special process of feeding the young larva intended 

 for a queen bee and changing the shape and size of the cell into one 

 having considerably more room. The first three days of her larval 

 stage the queen-to-be receives the same kind of food as that of all 

 worker larvae, but the quantity is increased after that time till the 

 little larva fairly floats in the white mass of food called "royal 

 jelly." This change of feeding and the increased size of the queen- 

 cell develop fully the female organs of the inmate, which would, 

 otherwise, from the same egg in a regular worker cell and with the 

 normal quantity of food, result in a worker bee, or undeveloped fe- 

 male. Unlike the worker bee cells or drone cells in the honey comb, 

 the queen cells are built out from the comb and hang with the mouth 

 of the cell downward, resemble, in their first stage, an inverted acorn 



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9 



I 



4 



Queen cells built at the bees' own free will. 



cup, and later appear rough and very much like the hull of a good 

 sized peanut. Queen cells are built when they are required. They 

 are not always in the hive. During the swarming season and when 

 queens are to be superseded the bees construct queen cells into which 

 the queen lays eggs ; but, if a colony is queenless from the removal or 

 death of its queen, the bees build queen cells about very young worker 

 larvae under three days old, by tearing down the walls of surounding 

 cells. From these queens hatch sixteen days after the eggs are laid, 

 considerable longer in size and having more strongly built legs than 

 the worker bees. Their abdomen is slightly longer and their thorax, 

 to which the wmgs and legs are attached, is somewhat thicker The 

 first queen that issues from a cell tears down the other queen cells 

 or, if several queens emerge, the strongest kills them and fills the 

 mother mission for the hive. For the first twelve to twenty-four 

 hours of her age she remains ahnost unnoticed by the bees as she 



