212 
THE FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE. 
hanging with the open side upward, and about every 
three days the queen stops in laying drone-eggs and 
goes to put an egg in one of these cells. Notice that 
she waits three days between each of these peculiar 
layings, because we shall see 
presently that there is a good 
reason for her doing so. 
The nursing bees take 
great care of these eggs, and 
instead of putting ordinary 
food into the cell, they fill 
it with a sweet, pungent jelly, 
for the larva is to become a 
princess and a future queen- 
bee. Curiously enough, it 
seems to be the peculiar food 
and the size of the cell which 
makes the larva grow into a 
mother-bee which can lay 
eggs, for if a hive has the 
61. Brood-comb cut misfortune to lose its queen, 
open, with the pupae, ,< , , r ,< . 
. they take one of the orcli- 
or young bees,/,/, in 
the cells. The lower nai T worker-larvse and put it 
into a royal cell and feed it 
with jelly, and it becomes a 
queen-bee. As soon as the 
princess is shut in like the others, she begins to spin 
her cocoon, but she does n6t quite close it as the other 
bees do, but leaves a hole at the top. 
At the end of sixteen days after the first royal 
egg was laid, the eldest princess begins to try to eat 
her way out of her cell, and about this time the old 
FIG. 
cells contain eggs, af- 
terward to become bees. 
q, a royal cell. 
