and its Economic Management. 183 



the position of the latter, judging from the manner in which they 

 insert the drone sperm. 



Many writers have fallen into the error of supposing that young 

 queens often commence by laying a number of drone as well as 

 worker eggs. In nuclei it is frequently to be noticed that many 

 cells contain drone larvae, but a little more careful observation 

 will always show that this is the result of fertile workers, which 

 often continue to deposit eggs after the young queen is in full 

 work. I have even had these pests start laying side by side with 

 a queen after she had been at work long enough to hatch her first 

 batch of brood. The queen was a Carniolan crossed with black 

 drone ; the fertile worker was from a Ligurian queen crossed by 

 Cyprian drone, the resulting drones being very yellow. The 

 yellow bees had been united to the stock to strengthen it, and 

 without this proof it might have been considered that the queen 

 had produced the drones. 



AVhile I have had ample evidence to show that bees are able 

 to retard the development of both eggs and larvae by withholding 

 food, where a colony has been queenless for more than ten days, 

 the presence of uncapped larvae, whether in queen cell cups or 

 ordinary cells, may be put down to the action of fertile workers. 



Many bee-keepers appear to understand that my non-swarming 

 plan can be carried out in a single ten or eleven-frame hive, 

 allowing only two or three frames at the front with starters. I 

 would never attempt such a pretence as this, and could not myself 

 work with so httle space. I must have longer hives and six or 

 seven empty frames in front of the brood nest ; or, in the case of 

 ten-frame hives, another chamber having only starters, must be 

 placed under the brood nest, as distinctly pointed out in my Non- 

 Swarming pamphlet, and now illustrated in the chapter on that 

 subject. 



