50 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HONEY-BEE,. 
rival, seized her across the wings, and, climbing upon her, 
pierced her with her sting. The vanquished queen, crawled 
languidly about, and soon after died.”—(‘* Nouvelles Observa- 
tions.”’) 
117. Although it is generally admitted that two queens 
cannot inhabit the same hive, it happens, sometimes, that 
mother and daughter, are found living peaceably together, 
and even laying eggs at the same time. This is when 
the bees, having noticed the decrease in fecundity of the 
old queen, have raised a young queen to replace her. But 
this abnormal state lasts only a few weeks, or a few months 
at most. 
118. Our junior partner was, one day, hunting for a 
queen with his sister. ‘‘ What a large and bright-colored 
queen! ’’ exclaimed he, on finding her. ‘‘ Why, no! she is 
dark and small,’’ said his sister.. Both were right, for there 
were two queens, mother and daughter, on the same comb, 
and not six inches apart. At another time we were looking 
for an old queen, whose prolificness had decreased, intend- 
ing to supersede her. To our wonder, the hive was full of 
brood. We found the old queen. Evidently a queen so 
small, so ragged and worn, could not be the mother of such 
a quantity of brood. We continued our search and found 
another queen, daughter of the first, large and plump. Had 
we introduced a strange queen into this hive, after having 
destroyed the old one, thinking that we had made the col- 
ony queenless, she would have been killed. 
119. We could relate a number of such instances. The 
most interesting case was the simultaneous laying of two 
queens of different breeds in the same hive, one black, the 
other Italian. ‘The colony had two queens, when we intro- 
duced our Italian queen. We found the younger one and 
killed her, and the old one was so little considered by her 
bees, that they accepted our imported queen and allowed 
both to remain together. To our astonishment there were 
