s 
BEE-CULTUBE. 
a queen. Three-fourths of the bees, old and young, gen- 
erally leave with the swarm ; one-fourth, most of them less 
than a week old, remaining in the old hive. The old hive 
will then contain perhaps twenty thousand eggs and young 
bees, the eggs hatching daily for three weeks. Bees do not 
hatch by litters, but are hatching every minute of summer.* 
Yes, I said the old colony will raise a queen from a com- 
mon egg, as men make a president of a common citizen. 
Queens and workers are all females; but workers seem like 
other animals not yet arrived at puberty. 
“But of all customs which tho bee can boast, 
’Tis this that claims our admiration most: 
That none will hymen’s softer joys approve, 
Nor waste their spirits in luxurious love: 
But all a long virginity maintain, 
And bring forth young without a mother’s pain.” — V irgil. 
By what means do the workers convert a common egg to 
a perfect queen ? We know of no means except that she is 
developed in a much larger cell, and receives a different kind 
of jelly or paste for food, and receives six times as much of 
it, thus developing in sixteen days to a perfect queen, instead 
of twenty-one days necessary to develop a worker. Some- 
times queen cells are started before the swarm leaves. 
Most invariably the queen will hatch in eleven days from the 
time the cell is started. Why so ? Because they usually 
take eggs that are five or six days advanced. 
An egg is nearly the size and the shape of a timothy seed. 
When three days old it is hatched and becomes a worm, mag- 
got or larva of the young bee, when it is supplied with a 
limpid jelly, made of honey, bee-bread, and water. After a 
few days they deposit enough food to develop it ; it is then 
sealed over and left till it is able to eat its way out. 
I said when the swarm left, the old colony proceeded to, 
rear themselves another queen ; but they usually rear from 
five to fifteen; an^J why, since only one is needed in the hive? 
The old queen is gone, and they have now none to lay eggs in 
case an accident should befall the one they are trying to raise. 
In such case they would soon dwindle to nothing. If they 
do not take the eggs before they are eight days old they can 
* The eggs of a bee hatch out in three days. From that timo until they aro capped 
over and assume the shape of a bee, are called worms, maggots, or larva). From tho 
time they assume tho shape of a bee nud are capped ovor until they leave tho cell, 
they aro called chrysalis, nymph, or pupa. The term brood includes each and all the 
stages of development. The term hatch is applied both to the changing of an ogg to 
a larva, and tho nymph coming from tho cell, lloyul cells arc cells in which queens 
aro reared. 
