NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HONEY-BEE. 
63 
inferred from their being the center of so much attrac- 
tion. 
While the other cells open sideways, the queen-cells 
always hang with their mouth downwards. Some Apia- 
rians think that this peculiar position affects, in some way, 
the development of the royal larvae ; while others, having 
ascertained that they are uninjured if placed in any other 
position, consider this deviation as among the inscrutable 
mysteries of the bee-hive. So it seemed to me, until con- 
vinced, by more careful observation, that they open down- 
wards simply to save room. The distance between the 
parallel ranges of comb in the hive is usually too small for 
the royal cells to open sideways, without interfering with 
the opposite cells. To economize space, the bees put 
them on the unoccupied edges of the comb, where there 
is plenty of room for such very large cells. 
The number of royal cells in a hive varies greatly ; 
sometimes there are only two or three, ordinarily not less 
than five ; and occasionally, more than a dozen. As it is 
not intended that the young queens should all be of the 
same age, the royal cells are not all begun at the same 
time. It is not fully settled how the eggs are deposited 
in these cells. In some few instances, I have thought that 
the bees transferred the eggs from common to queen-cells ; 
and this may be their general method of procedure. I 
shall hazard the conjecture, that, in a crowded state of the 
hive, the queen deposits her eggs in cells on the edges of 
the comb, some of which are afterwards changed by the 
workers into royal cells. Such is a queen’s instinctive 
hatred to her own kind, that it seems improbable that she 
should be intrusted with even the initiatory steps lor 
securing a race of successors. 
The young queens are much more largely supplied with 
food than the other larvae ; so that they seem to lie in a 
