A great deal of life's responsibility and a heavy burden falls upon the 
worker bee and she is literally worked to death. Six weeks is her aver- 
age life in the busy season. If, however, she emerges from her cell in 
the fall, she lives over the winter and until the labors of spring kill her. 
The worker bee is an undeveloped female, stunted in her growth and 
physical development by the kind of food fed her by the worker bees. 
The worker cannot mate, but under certain conditions lays eggs. 
The sting which nature has given her is her weapon of defense. In 
using it she loses her life, but she never hesitates if there is need. 
The queen looks very different from drones or worker bees: she 
has a long abdomen, is slightly lighter in color, and in the Italian 
stock she does not have the distinct bands the workers have. The 
queen starts life as a tiny egg in the bottom of a wax cell, such as 
honey is stored in, but very much enlarged by tearing down the cells 
adjacent to it. This egg is surrounded by chyle, a predigested food 
put there for the young larva, which is due to hatch in three days. 
This, the larva eats ravenously and grows proportionately, being 
thus fed for five and one-half days. The queen cell, too, has been built 
longer until it looks somewhat like a pearmt on the comb. The work- 
ers now seal the larva in and it spins a cocoon and remains as a pupa 
for seven and one-half days. Thus sixteen days after the egg is laid, 
the full grown queen bee emerges from the cell. She eats a little and 
runs about in search of any rival, for if two queens meet there is a 
deadly battle. Bees raise queens when they intend to swarm, and in 
that case the old queen and the swarm go off just before the young 
queen emerges from her cell. They raise queens when the old one dies, 
or an accident happens to her. If the bee-keeper wants more queens, 
all he has to do is to remove the queen, and the bees start to raise others 
to replace her. If honey is coming in, a great many queen cells will be 
started, an^'where from ten to twenty, but fewer if the weather is not 
auspicious and honey scarce. Of these numerous queens only one lives 
on in the hive, the others are killed by the first queen to hatch and the 
bees themselves tear down the incomplete cells. They will raise queens 
to supersede a failing queen. A failing queen can lay only drone eggs, 
and of course a hive of drones could not exist. In this case there are 
sometimes found two queens in a hive, mother and daughter, for the 
sense of rivalry does not seem to exist where one queen is failing. 
When the young queen is about four or five days old she usually 
takes her wedding trip. Before this she flies a little each day before 
the hive to get her bearings, for she must return to the hive she 
belongs to. She meets the drone in the air and he dies after mating, 
as his organs are attached to the queen. Shortly after this the queen 
starts to lay. She is fed chyle by the workers, and this concentrated 
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