74 BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



of a dark brown color on its belly ; six rings become 

 visible, which by slipping one over another enables 

 the bee to shorten its body. When it has reached 

 about the twentieth day of its existence from the 

 time the egg was laid, it comes forth a perfect bee ; 

 very weak and feeble at first, and is usually roughly 

 treated by the workers of a more advanced age. 

 The lining or cocoon is left in the cell in which it 

 was spun, causing the breeding cells to become 

 smaller and the partitions thicker, as often as they 

 change their tenants, until finally, after several years, 

 they become too small to rear brood in to advantage, 

 when they should be changed. 



The drone passes three days in the egg, six and a 

 half as a worm, and comes forth a perfect insect 

 about the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth day from 

 the time the egg is laid. 



The queen passes three days in the egg, and is five 

 a worm ; the workers then close her cell ; she imme- 

 diately begins to spin her cocoon, which occupies 

 her twenty-four hours. On the tenth and eleventh 

 days, and even sixteen hours of the twelfth, she 

 remains in complete repose, as if exhausted by her 

 labors ; she then passes four days and one-third as 

 a nymph. It is on the sixteenth day, therefore, that 

 the perfect state of the queen is attained. 



I am indebted to Bevan for this description. My 

 own experience corresponds very nearly with it, in 

 this latitude ; but a very considerable difference ex- 

 ists as to time between this and Sacramento, Cali- 

 fornia, where I spent the last season, propagating 



