12 Bt( -leeping in V ictorin. 



The bee, like other insects, goes through four stages of development, 

 viz., (i) egg, {2) larva, (3) chrysalis, and (4) imago or perfect insect. 



The ovaries of the queen contain up to 500,000 eggs, which she 

 deposits in the cells of the comb during the breeding season — after the 

 cells have been prepared for her by the worker bees. The life of a 

 queen bee is about three years. Under the most favorable conditions, she 

 will deposit up to 3,000 eggs in twenty-four hours. The eggs in the 

 ovaries of the queen are all alike as to .sex. The act of fertilization 

 takes place in the oviduct when the egg is on its way out, i.e., it is to 

 produce a female — a queen or a worker bee ; the egg producing a drone 

 is not fertilized. Thus, even a queen which has never met a drone will, 

 after a dela\ of two or three weeks, deposit eggs. None of these, how- 

 ever, can produce anything but drones. This reproduction without fer- 

 tilization was first discovered by Dr. Dzierszon in 1853. It is known 

 as parthenogenesis or virgin-development, and has a ver\- important bearing 

 on practical bee culture. 



The drones of a pure bred queen of any race are always pure of the 

 same race, even though the queen herself was mated to a drone of a dif- 

 ferent variety, 'i'hus, by having one single pure bred and purely mated 

 queen, and raising from her eggs a new queen for each colony, the race 

 or strain of bees of an entire apiary of hundreds of colonies may be 

 changed in one season. As each young queen is pure bred, her drone 

 progeny are also pure, irrespective of how she mated. The following 

 season there will therefore be none but pure drones in the apiarv. All 

 young queens will then be mated to pure drones.; and, if from' a pure 

 bred mother, will produce queens, workers, and drones of pure race. 

 The mating takes place in the air, often a considerable distance away from 

 the apiary, and some of the queens will most likelv be mis-mated when 

 other bees exist within two miles of the place. 



Fertilized eggs are deposited by the queen in the smaller or worker 

 cells of the comb; the cells are 1-5 in. in diameter — twenty-five to a square 

 mch of comb surface. Unfertile eggs are laid into drone cells, which 

 are |- m. wide— sixteen to the square inch. Bv the use of full sheets 

 of comb foundation in the frames of the modern hive, the raising of 

 drones is reduced to a minimum, because the wax sheets are embossed with 

 the nattern of worker comb only. Any egg which is fertilized, and would 

 m the ordmary course produce a worker trjee, can at the will of the nurse 

 bjes be made to produce a queen, when necessarv. This fact is made use 

 nf in what is known as artificial queen-rearing", bv depriving a suitable 

 colony of its queen and brood and substituting a comb containing e^gs or 

 young larvse from a queen of the race or strain desired. '^ 



After the egg which produces a worker is laid, it remains unaltered 

 tor three days. It is then supplied with a minute quantity of larval food 

 by the nurse bees, and a scarcelv visible grub or larvae, which lies coiled 

 at the bottom of the cell in the shape of the small c of ordinary type 

 emerges. It grows rapidlv ; and, on the sixth dav after emerging from 

 the egg. It assumes an upright position in the cell. The worker bees cap 

 the cell with a paper-like substance, the grub meanwhile spinning a cocoon 

 round itself m the cell. The young bee has now entered the third or 

 chrysalis stage, from^ which it emerges as the perfect insect, eighteen davs 

 from the time the larva first appeared, or twenty-one davs since the e'^-g 

 was laid. In the case of the queen, the time of development is five days 

 less. /.(•., three days in the egg stage, six days in the larval state, and 



