Much of fancy has been written about the queen bee. Her very name is misleading for there is nothing to indicate that she has anything to do with the government of the colony. In fact the very opposite is true for the worker bees are very solicitous concerning her and often oppose her will and restrain her actions. While old time writers on bee subjects saw in the queen, "their lawful sovereign" and lauded the loyalty of the subjects which could not be tempted to any act of disloyalty, "nor is there to be found so much as a single rebel in the community, " present day beekeepers know such talk is nonsense.

As far as can be seen such government as prevails in the hive is by common consent of the inmates with no individual direction. The queen enjoys less freedom than any other inmate for the very life of the community depends upon her and she is cared for and protected accordingly.

Queen Bee.

When the bees want a new queen, large cells like peanuts are built for nurseries.

The queen devotes her entire attention to the laying of the eggs from which the future inmates of the hive shall develop. So great are the demands upon her that she is unable even to digest her own food entirely. A group of nurses attend her constantly, regurgitating partially digested food and feeding her at frequent intervals. Since she lays hundreds, and at times thousands of eggs daily, the amount of food which she must consume, in proportion to her size, is enormous.

One of the most amazing things in all nature is the change that takes place in the development of a queen bee. The egg from which she comes is no different than the thousands of others which produce worker bees, and yet she is a very different creature. The change is simply the result of the different environment in which she is reared. Instead of permitting her to hatch in an ordinary cell such as those in which honey is stored, she comes to life in a special cell of large proportions having much the appearance of a peanut and of about the same size. She is fed on a richer food for the entire period of her larval development; a food which beekeepers call "royal jelly. " Because of this richer food and larger cell her physical development follows a different direction.

The mature queen is much larger in size than a worker. She lacks the wax secreting organs of the worker and instead her sex organs are fully developed. She lacks the pollen baskets and brushes which the worker must have for gathering food for young bees from the flowers by the wayside. Her eyes are different also. She will spend her days in the hive and does not need such keen sight to find the distant blossoms from which the food of the colony must be gathered.

The period of a queen's development is shorter than that required by the worker bee. Only sixteen days is required from the time the egg is placed in the cell until the queen comes forth fully matured, while twenty-one days elapses in the case of her sister who will do the work of the hive. Much that we know of the life of the bee reads like a fairy tale and progress was slow because men refused to accept the truth of the statements of those who first discovered the facts. The mysteries of the hive have gradually been cleared up and our system of management fitted to the facts. Space will not permit mention of many interesting things in connection with the life of the queen.