LOBS OF THE QUEEN. 
218 
CHAPTER XI. 
LOSS OF THE QUEEN. 
That the Queen-Bee is often lost, and that her colony 
will he ruined unless such a calamity is seasonably remedied, 
ought to be familiar facts to every bee-keeper. 
Queens sometimes die of disease or old age, when there 
is no brood to supply their loss. Few, however, perish 
under such circumstances ; for either the bees build royal 
cells, aware of their approaching end, or they die so sud- 
denly as to leave young brood behind them. Queens are 
not only much longer lived (p. 58) than the workers, but 
arc usually the last to perish in any fatal casualty. As 
many die of old age, if their death did not ordinarily 
occur under favorable circumstances, it would cause, 
yearly, the loss of a very large number of colonics. As 
they seldom die when their strength is not severely taxed 
in breeding, drones are usually on hand to impregnate 
their successors.* 
Young queens are sometimes born with wings so imper- 
fect that they cannot ily (p. 39) ; and they are often so 
injured in their contests with each other, or by the rude 
treatment they receive when driven from the royal cells 
(p. 121), that they cannot leave the hive for impregnation. 
♦ In preparing my stocks for Winter, I found — on the 21st of October, 1S5(>— 
two which had sealed queens. As the drones were not killed, in some of the hives, 
until after the 1st of November, these queens might have been impregnated, if the 
weather had not becomo vory cold. When oxnmined on the 21st day of February, 
these stocks had each a few sealed drones and lorvie, while weaker stocks had 
orach brood. The following is an extract from Prof. Lcldy’s description of these 
queens: — “Their ovaries were filled with eggs, from a mere point to such ns meas- 
ured four-fifths of a lino long, and one-eighth of a lino broad. Their spormnthecM 
were filled with mucoid, granular matter, aud epithelial cells, and did not contain 
