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dr. Miller s 
you will do no harm to give quite a large number, say as many as 
4C; the bees themselves will do the limiting by destroying the 
excess. 
Q. Why is it that queen-cells sometimes fail to hatch, even 
when carefully protected by prepared cages? In any case, I in- 
variably find that the larvae in the cells shriveled up at the 
hatching end of the cell; this in spite of a plentiful supply of 
“royal jelly,” favorable climatic conditions, and during the honey- 
flow. I have sometimes attributed the foregoing to the fact that 
cells were made from a queen’s first round of laying; but I have 
recently noted the same results with a second-season queen’s 
brood. 
A. Swiss beekeepers, who are away up in matters pertaining 
to queen-rearing, tell us that mere physical heat is not enough 
to bring young queens safely to maturity; the bees must be 
allowed to be in close contact with the cells, exercising some mys- 
terious influence by their close contact with the occupants of the 
cells. According to that it is a mistake to cage cells as soon as 
they are sealed. In my own practice I leave the cells uncaged in 
a strong colony, not caging them till there is danger of their 
hatching. But there is one thing that looks as if another cause 
was at the bottom of the trouble. You say you find the larva 
“shriveled up at the hatching end of the cell.” That looks as if 
the combs had been shaken, thus throwing the larva out of its bed 
of jelly. 
I had one colony queenless and gave it a frame of 
brood. The third day after, it had four queen-cells started. 
The next time I looked they were capped. When they had been 
capped about a week I looked into the hive again, intending to 
cut them out, but found that the bees had torn them down before 
it was time for them to hatch out. I also found two artificial 
swarms with queen-cells had done the same thing. I gave one of 
them another frame of brood. What is the matter with these 
colonies ? 
A. The probability is that a young queen had emerged from 
her cell. Her first care would be to see that all rivals were out 
of the way. Possibly you may say that you are sure that could 
not have been the case, for you looked the combs over very, very 
carefully, and every queen-cell was torn open at the side, the end 
of the cell being entire, showing that no queen could have emerged 
from it. In that case a virgin from elsewhere may have entered 
the hive. Oftener than you might suppose, a virgin or laying 
queen enters some other hive than her own. Sometimes, however, 
bees take a notion to destroy cells with no apparent reason for it. 
