288 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 
waxen* supports the pendulous extension will need, 
while many worker-cells beneath (B, Fig. 77) are 
cut back, and, for the time, rendered useless by 
pittings and cross-webbings, to give the new structure 
firm fixings. Such cells have been accurately called 
emergency queen-cells (^yc), and are produced by 
bees, without external interference, when they deter- 
mine to supersede their queen on account of growing 
infirmity. From this it would appear that the queen 
is a party to the project of leaving with a swarm, 
although she is not invited to take steps for her own 
deposition — she, in the former case, laying, at the 
suggestion of her children, what may be conveniently 
called a queen-egg; while, in the latter, they transform 
into a queen what she intended to be a worker. 
It is now of importance to determine whether the 
queen produced under the swarming impulse (the 
queen-egg queen) is superior to the queen produced 
under conditions of emergency; and here I can only 
refer to the anatomical demonstration which I have 
had both the honour and good fortune to be the first 
to make, and which, as given in Vol. I, conclusively 
proves the mode in which the egg receives its ferti- 
lisation — an unvarying process indicating that the egg 
in the queen-cup differs in no particular from that 
in the worker-cell. Admitting, then, that eggs in 
queen-cups are not superior to those in worker-cells, 
it is still possible for the queen from the emergency 
cell to be greatly inferior. 
* Rarely, queen-cells are made extremely thin, and Mr. Neighbour 
kindly gave me one, not more in any part than y^in. in thickness. 
Thin webbing to the surrounding comb held it in place. 
