The upper portion of the comb contains honey, with the exception of the dark cells, which contain pollen. The lower are drone cells; and the large cells, three in number on each side, are royal palaces. Her majesty is fed with royal jelly till she is ready to show herself; and everything that love and reverence and hope can supply, the bees delight to offer. But it is a curious entomological fact, first discovered by Schirach, an eminent apiarian of the last century, that the bees can supply the loss of their queen by an artificial process—a process confirmatory of the position that every working-bee egg has in it the component elements of royalty, and that development according to a definite treatment is all that is requisite to constitute a queen. On being deprived of their queen by death, the bees select a common grub, not above three days old, break down the wax partitions between it and at least three contiguous cells, forming a vertical pear-shaped chamber. They feed her with the daintiest food, called royal jelly. In five days the grub becomes a nymph, and in fifteen she emerges a royal princess, ascends the vacant throne, and receives the homage, loyalty, and love of fifteen or twenty thousand subjects. Kirby exclaims:—
"What! you will ask, can a larger and warmer house, a different and more pungent food, and a vertical instead of an horizontal posture, give a bee a different-shaped tongue and mandibles; render the surface of its under-legs flat instead of concave; deprive them of the fringe of hairs that forms the basket for carrying the masses of pollen,—of the auricle and pecten which enable the workers to use these legs or feet as pincers,—of the brush that lines the insides of the feet? Can they lengthen its abdomen; alter its colour and clothing; give a curvature to its sting; deprive it of its wax-pockets, and of the vessels for secreting that substance; and render its ovaries more conspicuous and capable of yielding worker and drone eggs?"
In spring, she moves among the combs laying her eggs. Ladies-in-waiting accompany her, who always turn their faces toward her majesty, clear the royal route, and clean out the cells in which she deposits her eggs.
Of this Lardner gives the following representation:—
The Reverend Charles Cotton, while he lived the prince of bee-masters, thus represents the queen and her attendant ladies:—
The queen is the central bee; the surrounding bees are her ladies-in-waiting, and the white specks the eggs she has deposited.
The queen-bee is a model keeper at home, rarely leaving the hive. Most apiarians are interested at present in the habits and acclimatisation of the Ligurian bee—the Apis Ligustica, or Italian bee. It is found easy to substitute an Italian for a British queen, in a British hive which has been deprived of its native sovereign. The bees refuse to constitute themselves into a republic, and therefore they will accept even a foreign queen, who, no doubt, takes the oaths and obligations of the realm over which she is to reign. There is a red tinge in the rings that surround the abdomen of this foreigner; and, contrary to what we should expect in an Italian temperament, the Ligurian bee is more gentle and conciliatory than our native queen. I speak from report, not from personal knowledge. But I hope one day to be present at a levée, and become better acquainted with the royal foreigner.