THOUSAND ANSWERS 
193 
A. A virgin queen looks very much like a laying queen, only 
her abdomen is smaller. 
Q. How long after the prime swarm issues before the first 
virgin will begin laying? 
A. About seventeen days. 
Queen-Cells. — Q. Are queen-cells all at the end or at the bot- 
tom of the combs? 
A. Bees generally build queen-cells along the lower edges of 
the combs. But if there is a hole, or some irregularity of surface 
in a comb, thus making room for a queen-cell, the bees do not 
despise the opportunity. In rare cases they will even build a cell 
separate from the comb on one of the bars of a frame. If a colony 
becomes suddenly queenless, they build cells over young worker- 
larvae, converting them into young queens, and these cells are 
often built right in the center of a brood-comb where there is no 
hole or irregularity of surface. 
Q. Which end of a queen-cell is the bottom — the end that a 
queen hatches out of, or the end where the egg is laid? 
A. The top is the bottom, always. Sounds tangled, doesn’t it? 
You see, it’s like a teacup; when the cup stands full of tea, the 
bottom of the cup is toward the ground; and then when the cup 
is turned upside down the name “bottom” still belongs to the same 
part we called the “bottom” before, although the bottom now 
points skyward. The bees build queen-cells upside down, and so 
the bottom of the cell, like the bottom of the teacup when turned 
upside down, always points skyward. (To be sure, in rare in- 
stances, a queen-cell lies horizontally, but that occurs so seldom 
that it doesn’t count.) Then, when we speak of the other end of 
the cell, the illustration of the teacup fails. For when a teacup is 
upside down, the part that is downward is still called the top; 
but the part of a queen-cell that is downward is not the top, but 
“the lower end.” So the egg is laid in the bottom of the cell, and 
the young queen emerges from the lower end. Absurd way of 
talkin, isn’t it? But please don’t blame me; I wasn’t born when 
beekeepers agreed to talk that way about a queen-cell. 
Q. If the queenless bees should make a queen-cell, and place 
therein an egg, how long before the cell will be capped, and how 
long before there is a full-fledged queen? 
A. In eight or nine days from the time the egg is laid the cell 
should be capped. But instead of an egg, queenless bees will 
start with a larva; two days or so of age, and it ought to be capped 
