RAISING AND INTRODUCTION OP QUEENS. 32.7 
queen had been removed from her colony, and the 
agitation described at page 286 had reached its 
height, returning her to her children instantly esta- 
blished calmness (a new-born calm) in their midst, 
but that the substitution of another queen did not pro- 
duce the same effect. He states that if the alien is 
introduced into the hive during the first twelve hours 
which follow the carrying off of the reigning queen, 
the agitation continues, and the bees treat the strange 
queen as they would if their proper one were still 
with them. They seize her, envelope her, on all 
sides, and hold her captive in an impenetrable mass 
during a long space of time. OrdmafMy,.. the queen 
succumbs — i^' may be of hunger or of deprivation of 
air. When '^eighteen hours are allowed to pass before 
substituting a stranger for the one removed, the 
former is treated at first in the same manner, but the 
bees which 'have surrounded her grow weary more 
quickly, and the mass is, ere long, less dense. Little 
by little they disperse, and at length this queen comes 
out of captivity. She is seen to walk off with a feeble 
and languishing step, and sometimes she expires in a 
few minutes. “We have seen,’’ Huber continues, “other 
queens leave, in good condition, an imprisonment 
which has continued seventeen hours, and finish up by 
reigning in the hive where, at first, they have been so 
badly received.” But if one waits twenty-four or thirty 
hours before substituting a stranger, she will be wel- 
comed, and reign from the instant of her introduction. 
These early experiments roughly indicate that, while 
the old mother is only missed, a stranger would be 
regarded as an enemy, but when despair has 
