44 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HONEY-BEE. 
think that this peculiar position affects, in some way, the 
development of the royal larvie ; while others, having ascer- 
tained that they are uninjured if placed in any other posi- 
tion, consider this deviation as among the inscrutable 
mysteries of the bee-hive. So it seemed to us until convinced, 
by a more careful observation, that they open downwards 
simply to save room. The distance between the parallel 
ranges of comb in the hive is usually too small for the royal 
cells to open sideways, without interfering with the opposite 
cells. To economize space, the bees put them on the unoc- 
cupied edges of the comb, where there is plenty of room for 
such very large cells. 
105. The number of royal cells in a hive varies greatly ; 
sometimes there are only two or three, ordinarily not less 
than five; and occasionally, more than a dozen. 
Some races of bees have a disposition to raise a greater 
number of queen-cells than others. At the Toronto meet- 
ing of the North American Bee-keepers’ Association, in 
September, 1883, Mr. D. A. Jones, the noted Canadian im- 
porter of Syrian and Cyprian bees, and publisher of the 
Canadian Bee Journal, exhibited a comb containing about 
eighty queen-cells, built by a colony of Syrian bees (560). 
Such cases are rare in the hive of any other race. 
106. As it is not intended that the young queens should 
all be of the same age, the royal-cells are not all begun at 
the same time. It is not fully settled how the eggs are de- 
posited in these cells. In some few instances, we have 
known the bees to transfer the eggs from common to queen- 
cells; and this may be their general method of procedure. 
Mr. Wagner put some queenless bees, brought from a dis- 
tance, into empty combs that had lain for two years in his 
garret. When supplied with brood, they raised their queen 
in this old comb! Mr. Richard Colvin, of Baltimore, and 
other Apiarian friends, have communicated to us instances 
almost as striking. Yet, Huber has proved that bees do 
