thousand answers 77 
cellared, she begins about the time bees are taken out of the 
celiac. 
Q. What would you think of a queen that fills every cell in 
most of the combs with eggs, and in numerous places has eggs 
in half-built cells, and in cells filled with beebread? 
A. That is just what every good queen should do, except lay- 
ing in a cell containing pollen. When you find eggs in a 
pollen-cell you may generally count that laying workers are pres- 
ent, although it is possible that occasionally an otherwise good 
queen may do such a foolish thing. 
Eggs. — Q. Has the queen the power to fertilize eggs or not? 
A. Sure. She fertilizes all but the drone-eggs. 
Q. In regard to bee-eggs, is there any difference or distinction 
between the eggs from which a queen and worker are hatched or 
reared? If I am correct, bee-men use any egg they may come to 
when transferring eggs to queen-cells, and the difference results 
from the size of call and the material on which the young bees 
are fed. 
A. An egg laid by a good queen in a queen-cell is precisely the 
same as one she lays in a worker-cell. A drone-egg is a different 
thing. A drone-egg is unfertilized and can produce nothing but 
a drone, even if fed in a queen-cell; other eggs are fertilized. 
Q. I have only one colony of bees, in which I find many cells 
with from 2 to 6 eggs in each. And at the front end of some of 
the combs there are cells that seem to have 30 or 40 eggs in each. 
I never saw anything like it before. I could not find the queen. 
Did laying workers try to fill the cells with eggs? 
A. Almost certainly it is laying workers. You will probably 
find that if any drone-cells are in the brood-nest the nuisances 
have been specially favorable to .them. Also, you will be likely 
to find one or more queen-cells, and in these there may be as 
many as a dozen eggs in each. Better break up the whole busi- 
ness, giving combs with adhering bees to other colonies. 
Q. I have a queen that I reared in a nucleus. She is of good 
size and pure Italian; very gentle. I have seen her lay while 
holding up the comb, but I have counted as many as six eggs in 
one cell. What do you think is the matter with her? She is in a 
hive, but the bees cover only four frames in it. Do you think 
there ought to be more bees in it so the queen could have more 
room? 
A. It is nothing unusual for a good queen to lay more than 
one egg in a cell when she has so small a force of bees that she 
hasn’t room to spread herself ; although it is unusual for her to 
