1 8 THE ECONOMY OF THE HIVE 



are scarce and bad weather prevents foragers 

 bringing in more, egg laying is very slow, but 

 the moment a change in conditions enables pro- 

 vender to be brought in, she commences to lay 

 more freely. 



Perhaps the strongest evidence against the idea 

 of the queen being paramount as an authority is 

 supplied by the strange events which take place 

 when the colony has grown beyond the capacities 

 of its dwelling and a new one is to be founded. 

 When this is the case, the bees build some special 

 queen cells and rear a number of young queens. 

 Now it may be doubted whether the queen 

 has any knowledge of what is being projected. 

 Queen eggs do not differ in any way from worker 

 eggs. The difference ultimately produced is 

 brought about, strange though it may seem, 

 solely by a different diet, and if we take a queen 

 away from a hive which has not already com- 

 menced queen cells, leaving plenty of worker 

 eggs therein, the bees will raise new queens from 

 those eggs. Some observers even say that the 

 queen does not lay the eggs in the queen cells, 

 but that the workers remove them from worker 

 cells and place them in the special cubicles that 

 are being built for queen rearing. 



At any rate, when the young queens come to 

 maturity, which they do very quickly, the old 

 queen manifests very great annoyance at their 

 presence. She becomes aware of it by a curious 



