Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/509

Rh When the first great drone-laying begins, the bees construct a number of royal cells, sometimes as many as twenty-seven. In these the queen deposits eggs on successive days, so that, when she leads off the new swarm, another queen may be ready to take her place; and also, that if the swarm be vigorous enough to throw off several colonies, each may be provided with a leader. During this season the ordinary instincts of the workers seem reversed; they hinder the queen, if she seems so disposed, from destroying the royal pupæ contained in the cells.

A common bee, when it reaches maturity, makes its way, without help, out of the cell, and it is for some time too weak to fly. A queen, however, is guarded by the bees; she is closely watched, and constantly fed through a small aperture in the covering of her cell, till she has attained sufficient strength to fly. The presence of a developed and imprisoned queen is generally made patent by a peculiar note which she utters, called piping. Above the busy hum of the hive this sound may be distinguished; it seems to be the expression of her impatience at her imprisonment, and is the usual precursor of swarming.

Another note, peculiar to the queen, Huber mentions. This he calls the vox regalis, and he states that its utterance invariably struck the bees motionless. It has not been observed by modern apiarians, and yet the best among them do not deny the fact, because of his usual exactness and caution.

Huber describes the process of swarming in minute detail. Toward the close of the drone-laying season, when numbers of the drones, and some of the queens, have nearly attained maturity, he observed the old queen rapidly passing over the combs. She created an agitation wherever she went, which did not subside after her departure, but communicated itself to all the bees in the vicinity. Finally, the whole swarm appeared to be in a violent state of excitement, and large numbers issued from the hive with the queen at their head. During the agitation, which precedes swarming, the thermometer rises from between 90° and 97° to 104°. "This heat is intolerable to bees," says Huber; "when exposed to it, they rush impetuously to the outlets of the hive, and depart." Swarming is occasioned by excessive heat, quite as much as by an overstocked hive. The initial cause of the queen's agitation is not known, but it always communicates itself to the whole swarm, whatever its cause may be.

Queens raised from the larvæ of workers had been called mute, because the piping had not been observed in them; but Huber discovered that it was only because they are not detained in captivity. He held one in confinement, and found her piping quite as vehement as that of her sisters, reared from the beginning in royal quarters.

The instinct of worker-bees, which is usually so unerring, sometimes fails them in the most unaccountable way. Though they detect drone-eggs in worker-cells, and worker-eggs in drone-cells, they seem