LOSS OF QUEENS. 
67 
and nurses left in the hive. I do not know that there is such 
a division of labor, each having its appropriate work to per- 
form. Any one can do all the parts, yet the young bees 
mainly do the nursing; these are the ones mostly left in the 
hive when it has been moved to a new locality to let the bees 
fly back to the old stand. If the bees and honey be equally 
distributed, the hive that is queenless will construct drone 
combs principally in the empty space in the hive until their 
young queen becomes fertile. So much drone comb will make 
the hive an unprofitable one afterwards. The hive that has 
all the brood and honey of course does not need so many bees 
as the one that has neither. 
LOSS OF QUEENS. 
Loss of queens is a fruitful source of loss of colonics. For 
if they have not the means to produce another queen they 
will inevitably dwindle to nothing. This is one means of 
testing the length of life of bees. When they have no queen 
capable of producing bees to supply the daily loss, it ^^arcly 
the case that a colony will survive more than four months 
except in winter; hives in this condition labor with less assi- 
duity. Some say they will gather no bee bread while they are 
queenless, as they need none for brood. This is not the case, 
although they will not gather so freely, and they defend 
themselves less vigorously against worms and robbers. A 
queen may die at any time, but the four-fifths of the failures 
take place just after swarming, when the young queens fly 
out to meet the drones. That they do this has ceased to be 
a question among intelligent practical bee men ; also, that 
one impregnation is effective for life. Queens generally fly 
out for this purpose about noon, or a little after, when they 
are a week old. Sometimes- they are out a few miuutes, at 
others an half hour or more. They sometimes mate with 
drones at considerable distance from home. When there 
were no Italian bees in this county, except close to Cadiz, I 
found a number of hives three or four miles from town that 
had queens which had been fertilized by Italiau drones and 
produced a mixed progeny. However, when drones are nu- 
merous in an apiary, queens seldom have to be out long or fly 
far to meet them. On their excursions they are' liable to be 
lost from various causes, or on returning, may enter the 
