44 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HONEY-BEE. 



think that this peculiar position affects, in some way, the 

 development of the royal larvte ; while others, having ascer- 

 tained that they are uninjured if placed in anj'' other posi- 

 tion, consider this deviation as among the inscrutable 

 mysteries of the bee-hive. So it seemed to us until convinced, 

 bj- a more careful observation, that they open downwards 

 simply to save room. The distance between the parallel 

 ranges of comb in the hive is usuallj'' too small for the royal 

 cells to open sidewaj-s, 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 onlj' two or three, ordinarily not less 

 than five ; and occasionallj', 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 (660). 

 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 fuUy 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 



