REARING QUEENS. 
89 
■them separately to each nucleus by cutting an aperture in 
one of its combs, anil fitting the queen cell into it.. Great 
care is required in performing this operation in order to pre- 
vent the young queen from being injured or destroyed. 
Some of them will at that time be found to have just changed 
into its pupae or chrysalis stage of development, when they 
are so tender that a slight pressure, jar, or too long exposure 
to the cool air, may destroy their vitality. Where these 
queen cells are distributed to colonies which have but re- 
cently been deprived of their queens, and still have eggs or 
grub young enough to be convertible into queens, they not 
unfrequcnily destroy the transferred one, even to the third 
and fourth trial ; and in some instances I have had them to 
continue it when they had no longer any material for young 
queens left. In such cases they will sometimes receive a 
batched or mature queen ; but in others they pertinaciously 
refuse to receive any, but in that case will occasionally rtar 
one or more from eggs which may be furnished them imme- 
diately after those which they bad have from age ceased to 
be convertible into queens. In a few instances, however, 
they will, for a time, refuse to receive or rear all and any 
queens. When this is the case, it is best to break it up and 
unite it to another. These obstinate and contrary nuclei are 
apt to become infested with “fertile workers,” which, while 
they resemble the ordinary worker bee, are capable of laying 
eggs which produce drones only. In rearing queens the 
workers not unfrequcutly, after feeding a number of the 
worker larv® for two or three days upon the royal jelly 
(upon which embfyo queens are fed as if intending to convert 
them into queens), suddenly cease to supply a portion of 
them with it, and thenceforward supply them with such food 
only as is used in the development of the ordinary worker 
bee, completing their development as such. 
From the period of hatching to that of impregnation, 
which, in favorable weather, is generally from seven to four- 
teen days, many young queens are lost, or perish from various 
causes, a few of which it may be well to enumerate. They 
may be caught by the bee martin, become exhausted, fall to 
the ground, become chilled, or, from exhaustion, be unable 
again to rise, their wings being short ; sometimes when she 
flies out the workers follow her, as in swarming, and all de- 
sert their home together ; at others they attempt to enter 
