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four to six days later. In fifteen or sixteen days from the laying 
of the egg the queen will hatch. 
Q. When is a queen-cell ripe? 
A. The term “ripe” is applied to a queen-cell when it is near 
the time for the young queen to emerge, perhaps any time within 
two days, possibly within three, of emergence. When a cell is 
Fig. 25. — Queen-cells built on the lower side of combs by a colony which had 
been deprived of its queen. 
sealed, you may know that at the farthest it will be only about 
eight days till the young queen emerges. Usually the sharp point 
of the cell will be gnawed away something like two days before 
the hatching, leaving the cell quite rounding at the end. 
Q. When a colony is queenless and there are queen-cells, then 
one queen hatches, do the bees, or the first queen hatched, destroy 
the other queen-cells? 
A. Both engage in the gruesome business. 
Q. How often will I have to look for queen-cells? 
A. There’s no law against your doing so whenever you feel 
like it, but I suspect you mean to prevent swarming. As already 
