QUEENS 
697 
on during the season. In some years the 
baby nuclei will gather enough to supply 
their own needs. At other times they will 
require a little help. 
These little twin nuclei serve only the 
purpose of mating. No cells a^e reared in 
them, and the comparatively small number 
of bees in each compartment makes it easy 
to find a laying queen or virgin if present. 
If in doubt as to whether the nucleus has a 
virgin, another cell should be given; and 
even should the virgin come back from her 
flight she will take care of that cell by 
gnawing a hole in its side and killing its 
occupant. Should she be lost in one of 
those flights the cell will provide another 
virgin, which will come on in due course of 
time. It is better to have a surplus of cells 
than to lose time. 
These baby nuclei have been carefully 
tested in one of the author’s yards, and 
have given good results; but one needs to 
remember a few things in handling them or 
he may become digusted with the whole 
plan. 
1. If the force becomes a little weak, a 
frame of emerging brood should be given, 
but not eggs nor larvae; or if this cannot be 
had, after the last queen is taken out a few. 
more bees may be dumped in from a strong 
colony of the main yard. While some of 
these will go back, many will remain. 
2. After the young queens begin to lay 
they should be taken out almost immedi¬ 
ately, otherwise they will fill the two small 
combs with eggs and lead off a little swarm 
if there is a honey flow on. If not con¬ 
venient to take the queen out at once, the 
perforated zinc side should be shoved 
around to shut her in. 
3. It is preferable to make up these little 
nuclei with bees from some outyard. 
4. Neither side of the nucleus box should 
be allowed to become empty of bees. The 
combined heat -of the two clusters brings 
about a better state of contentment. 
QUEENS.— T he most important person¬ 
age in the hive is the queen, or mother bee. 
She is called the mother bee because she is, 
in reality, the mother of all the bees in the 
hive. 
Structurally she is much like the worker 
bee. The same egg that will produce a 
worker will also produce a queen. While 
a worker will lay eggs only under stress of 
abnormal conditions, and these only drone 
eggs (see Laying Workers), the queen 
bee, after she has met a drone (or male 
bee), will lay two kinds of eggs—worker 
and drone. While the worker bees have all 
the organs of the queen, those organs are 
undeveloped. The workers instead of be¬ 
ing neuters are all females but incapable of 
reproducing more females. The queen is 
the only true female. So far from being a 
ruler or sovereign she is little more than an 
egg-laying machine subject to the caprices 
of the worker bees. 
When a colony is deprived of its queen, 
the bees set to work and raise another so 
long as they have any worker larvae or 
eggs in the hive from which to do it. This 
is the rule; but there are some exceptions 
—so few, however, that it is safe to assume 
that a queen of some kind is present in the 
hive whenever they refuse to- start queen- 
cells from eggs or larvae of a proper age. 
undersized or imperfectly developed 
QUEENS. 
Some laying queens are small* and un¬ 
usually dark in color, and yet become fer¬ 
tilized. They lay eggs for a little while 
(from a week to several months), but sel¬ 
dom prove profitable. Sometimes they will 
not lay at all, but remain in a colony all 
The queen and her retinue. 
thru the season, neither doing any good nor 
permitting any other queen to be either in¬ 
troduced or reared. A wingless queen, or 
one with bad wings, will prevent another 
*Small queens are not necessarily inferior. One 
of the most marvelous egg-producers I ever saw 
was a “bantam” from Golden stock. She could 
run thru perforated zinc and hack again, before 
a worker could get started thru.—A. C. Miller. 
