50 PHTSIOLOCY 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 jjeaceably 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 looldng 

 for an old queen, whose prohficness 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 Itahan. The colony had two queens, when we intro- 

 duced our Itahan queen. We found the younger one and 

 killed her, and the old one was so Httle considered by her 

 bees, that they accepted our imported queen and allowed 

 both to remain together. To our astonishment there were 



