320 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 
did not seem to settle well to work. At my return 
home, a week after, I found the queen imprisoned 
between the quilt and the chaff-box and the top bar 
of one of the frames, her head only being free. The 
bees had recognised her, and no doubt duly supplied 
her with food, and so they had remained. At her libera- 
tion she walked slowly down, but showed a conspi- 
cuous dent in the thorax. Her egg-producing powers 
were unimpaired, but she had lost the instinct of 
regulating the brood-nest, never leaving one side of 
one comb, in which she laid and relaid continually 
in the same cells until brood appeared, when she 
moved off to others. The same lack is observable in 
the fertile worker, which will often lay as many as a 
dozen eggs in a cell. 
But one more point before we leave this question 
of selection, the importance of which can only be 
fully appreciated by the bee-keeper who apprehends 
clearly that nature and art are not at one in the 
objects sought. Individual variations* in the period 
of development of queens have affected that period 
in a remarkable manner. In a state of nature the 
queen that hatches out first — or, other things being 
equal, which develops most quickly (Vol. I., page 
244) — has the best chance of surviving; and hence, 
natural processes have, in contravention of some 
analogies, so expedited the maturation of queens, 
that they, the larger creatures, develop in about six- 
teen days, while the workers do not leave their 
cells till four and a half days later. This selection 
is an all-round advantage, being not only favourable 
* See “ Social Instincts of Bees,” by G. D. Haviland, B.A. 
le 
