64 THE BLESSED BEES. 



three times, and beheading the drone brood, but I 

 determined to adopt it, for I could see no other way 

 of securing purely fertilized queens the first year. 



7. If a hive of bees, at any season of the year 

 when there are eggs or larvae not more than three 

 days old in the combs, be deprived of its queen, the 

 bees will at once proceed to supply themselves with 

 a new queen. This they do by constructing a num- 

 ber of queen-cells, usually from five to twelve, into 

 each of which they put a worker egg or a worker 

 larva, and then feed this with a peculiar kind of food 

 called royal jelly, whereupon this egg or larva, 

 which if left in a worker cell and fed upon worker 

 food would have grown to be a worker-bee, develops 

 into a queen-bee. Eight days from the laying of 

 the egg this young queen arrives at the age when 

 the workers seal her up in her cell, to undergo her 

 final transformation. On the sixteenth day from 

 the egg the young queens are full grown, and, if un- 

 disturbed, will come out perfect queens. At any 

 time, between sealing up and hatching, the queen- 

 cells may be taken from the hive, and, if inserted in 

 another queenless hive, will usually be accepted and 

 allowed to hatch. The cells may also be hatched 

 by artificial heat. 



8. I had the few drones which had hatched in the 

 Italian hive before its arrival, and the few that 

 would hatch from day to day from the two frames 



