If the queen is in a cage it will be necessary to liberate her and to let her run into the hive with the workers when the latter have almost all entered the hive.
Next morning the front of the stock-box may be lowered, and we may take a peep into the hive by lifting up a corner of the quilts. All frames not filled with bees may be removed and placed behind the dummy, to be given again to the bees when they require more room, which they will do in a few days.
If the weather keeps fine and warm we shall now see a number of workers flying around the entrance of the hive, and carefully noting the position of their new home. Then off they will go to the fields in search of food in the shape of honey and pollen, to return again before long with their bodies distended with the sweet juice, and their “thighs” laden with the yellow paste.
Meanwhile their comrades at home have not been idle. Clustering inside the hive, they have been busy secreting wax, and have already drawn out some of the foundation into a comb of cells to hold the supplies brought in by the field-workers.
And so the work of construction and storage goes on day after day, harmoniously and rapidly. There are no hitches or quarrelling amongst the twenty thousand or so little workers which constitute the swarm. Each one knows and does her share of the work, with results that are astonishing, as we shall see if we examine the hive at the end of even one short week.
Donning the veil,[3] and armed with the smoker charged, as before, with smouldering brown paper, we send one or two light puffs of smoke into the entrance, which quiets the bees and prepares them for the intended examination. We then remove the roof, taking care not to jar the hive, and, lifting up a corner of the quilts, we send another gentle puff or two of smoke between the frames. We do the same at another corner. After this we make bold to lift out a frame covered with bees, and to our surprise we find that it is filled from top to bottom with a delicate white comb. It is already quite heavy with the honey which glitters in thousands of cells. Here and there a cell contains, instead of honey, a dark mass of pollen-paste called bee-bread.
A more careful inspection of the comb will show that the queen-bee too has done her share of work, not by helping to gather honey or to build combs, but by laying eggs which will hatch into grubs (larvæ), and these, by careful feeding and nursing, will eventually become worker-bees, to take the place of the present workers when they die. Near the centre of the comb is a broad circle of cells, each of which contains a tiny white egg, almost invisible to the eye, which the queen has deposited there. Within this circle, in the very centre of the comb, we shall probably find that these eggs have given place to plump little larvæ, each one coiled up in the bottom of its cell, and floating in a tiny drop of liquid food which the workers have supplied and keep replenishing. When the larvæ are full grown the mouths of their cells will be covered over by a thin capping of wax, and, hidden away underneath this capping, they will change to the third or pupal stage. The perfect bee gradually develops from this stage, and in three weeks from the time that it was deposited in its cell by the queen-bee as an almost microscopic egg it emerges from it as a full-fledged worker-bee, exactly like the other worker-bees in the hive, and fit in a few days’ time for two months of daily incessant toil. No sooner has the young worker quitted its cell than the cell is cleaned out by one of the other workers, and a fresh egg is deposited in it by the queen. Thus thousands of willing workers are raised from mere specks in the space of three short weeks, and as soon as these shall have completed their marvellous transformations, thousands more will be similarly reared in their place. What wonders the beehive contains! But we are only on the threshold of them.
SECTION THROUGH COMB CONTAINING BROOD (ENLARGED).
This paper will close with a few hints that may now come in useful to the beginner.