QUEENS 
701 
times supplant an old laying’ queen. Two 
queens, when thus thrown together, gener- 
erally fight very soon, but this does not al¬ 
ways happen. Several eases are on record 
where they have lived in peace and har¬ 
mony for months, even when they emerge at 
about the same time, and it is quite com¬ 
mon to find a young queen helping' her 
mother in the egg-laying duties of the hive, 
especially when the mother is two or three 
years old. If the- season is good, and the 
hive populous, they may divide up their 
forces, and after-swarming occurs. See 
After-swarming. 
Sometimes the queen will pay no atten¬ 
tion to the remaining cells, but will let 
the young queens emerge, and then their 
teeting. Whatever it is, it consists of a 
prolonged tone, or a long zeep followed by 
several much shorter, each tone shorter 
than the preceding one. This piping is 
made when the queen is out of the cell, 
either virgin or laying, but usually by a 
young one. The older ones are generally 
too dignified, or too something, to give 
forth any such loud squealing; but they 
will squeal, and lustily, .too, sometimes, 
when the bees ball them and grab them by 
the legs and wings. 
The other note that queen bees are known 
to give forth is what is called qualiking , 
for that more nearly describes the actual 
sound than any other combination of let¬ 
ters that can be put together. It is emitted 
only by a young queen in the 
cell, before she emerges, and is 
made in answer to the piping or 
zeep, zeep, of one of the virgins 
that has already emerged, and 
is trying perhaps to proclaim 
aloud her sovereignty. The quahk 
will be heard, then, only when 
there are queen-cells in the hive. 
While a young queen is being 
introduced she frequently utters 
a note of alarm, a zeep, zeep, 
etc. The bees are almost always 
stirred by these notes and they 
will often run after her and 
cling around her like a ball, 
when they would have paid no 
attention to her had she not ut¬ 
tered this well-known note. 
Queens, when placed near to¬ 
gether in cages, will often call 
and answer each other, in tones 
Natural queen-cells at different stages—The capped cell 
on the left has been detached from the comb, and is ready"to 
give to a colony; cell in the center, flv.e or six days old, has 
been shaved down to show the queen larva just before it is 
ready to stretch out lengthwise of the cell; cell on the right 
shows the mouth of a cell just before capping. 
‘little differences” are adjusted afterward,, 
either by swarming or by the usual “hand- 
to-hand” conflict “until 1 death.” Many losses 
in introducing queens have resulted from 
two queens being in the hive, the owner be¬ 
ing sure his hive was queenless — because he 
had removed one. See Introducing. 
QUEEN’S VOICES. 
Queens have two kinds of voices, or calls, 
either one of which they may emit on cer¬ 
tain occasions. It is almost impossible, on 
the printed page, to describe these sounds. 
One of them is a sort of z-e-e-p, z-e-e-p, 
zeep, zeep. Some call it piping, others 
that are probably challenges to mortal com¬ 
bat. 
Some queens received one summer from 
the South called so loudly when placed on 
the table that they could be heard the entire 
length of a long room. One voice would be 
on a high, shrill key and another a deep 
bass, while others were intermediate. On 
watching closely a tremulous movement of 
the wings was noticed while the queen was 
uttering the note, and one might infer from 
this that the sound is produced by the 
wings, but this is probably not the case. 
Some one reported having heard a queen 
