286 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 
lessness, a mournful search is commenced. The 
alighting-board and hive front are never free of 
workers running to the right and to the left, and 
investigating every corner. The usual wise division 
of labour is replaced by a ludicrous waste of power, 
since every bee seems to think it necessary that she 
should personally scrutinise the spots that have been 
visited a thousand times before. The trained eye, 
giving a glance at the alighting-board, knows at 
once that the queen is missed. 
When hope has faded away, and the search is 
pronounced useless, order again reigns, and the bees 
settle down to queen-cell building ; but those who 
think that cells constructed under these circum- 
stances are like those which are produced to supply 
successors to the old mother who is destined to leave 
with a swarm, are in error. In the latter case, cups 
in convenient positions, either on the edge of the 
comb, or on its side, are based upon a solid founda- 
tion of dense wax, aided by comb-nibblings and 
scraps in general, so that it is nearly of the colour 
of the comb upon which it begins to grow, and in 
this cup {nqc^ Fig. 77) the queen deposits her egg, 
which is from the beginning destined to form a 
queen. In the illustration — drawn from an actual 
cell, divided by a knife dipped into alcohol — it is 
worthy of remark that honey (H, H) filled the 
parts of worker-cells upon which the queen-cup 
was fixed, and that the cells below [rc) were cut 
back, so that full accommodation should be given to 
the royal cradle and its crowd of attendants. 
When queen-cells are built in the absence of a 
