HISTORY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 29 



should perhaps remark, that this experiment was 

 made in an observatory hive, glass sides — what Bevan 

 calls a mirror hive. 



Suddenly alarm a colony that has its preparations 

 for swarming nearly completed, i. e. young queens 

 in an advanced conditiou, such as are found previous 

 to the first swarm going forth, so as to withdraw the 

 attention of the guard of workers from the royal 

 cells for a time, as a general thing the old queen will 

 destroy all the embryo queens ; she will most cer- 

 tainly do so, if not prevented by the workers. Does 

 not this prove very conclusively that the queen of 

 a colony does not desire any other queen raised 

 in her domains, for any purpose, and consequently 

 does not deposit any eggs in the royal cells ? 



The workers, when they find it necessary to rear 

 queens, either for the purpose of supplying the place 

 of one just taken from them, or for swarming pur- 

 poses, remove eggs from the worker cells and place 

 them in the prepared queen cells. I have known 

 them to do this frequently, wheu I have removed the 

 queen. Several cells would bo built from three- 

 eighths to half an inch deep, within twenty-four to 

 forty hours. I have looked into these very fre- 

 quently, when no egg was to be seen, and noted such 

 cells carefully, having examined again and again. 

 Perhaps in a few hours, or during that day or the 

 next, an egg could be distinctly seen attached to the 

 top of the cell, nothing else being in the cell ; a few 

 hours afterward a very small quantity of a whitish 

 substance could be seen surrounding the egg; this 

 3* 



