wn mouths into the baby mouths. After
lunching a couple of days on bee jelly they are old enough to eat pollen
and honey, which the workers get out of the six-sided rooms where they
have packed it away.

"These babies grow very quickly. Soon they are so long that they almost
fill their rooms. Then the nurses put in some extra food, tuck in the
babies, and make a roof of wax over each room. For a whole day the baby
has to feed itself, shut away all alone; then it stops eating, and lies
very quietly while it is being made into a real bee. In about thirteen
days it splits its dried skin, in which it has been napping, gnaws a
hole in the wax roof, and out it comes--a full-fledged bee.

"But it is too new and young to go out in the big world yet, so for a
few weeks it is kept busy in the hive nursing other baby bees. When it
has grown stronger it leaves the hive, flying out over the sunny
pastures in search of buttercups and clover heads.

"Whenever the honey-bees want to make a queen they know just how to do
it. You know, a queen is a very important person. A bee queen is like an
ant queen, not the ruler of a kingdom, but the mother of many, many
children. Since a queen is a person of such note, she must have a larger
room than an ordinary worker, so they set to work and tear down the
partitions between two or three cells. When the egg in the large room
hatches the white larva is fed bee jelly, just like the little worker
larva, but it is never given any pollen or honey. When it is five days
old some jelly is put in the room with it and a roof is built over its
head. For seven long days the baby stays here all alone, then it gnaws
its way out, and, wonder of wonders, we have a queen instead of a
worker!

"Now, Mrs. Honey-Bee has been the queen of the family so long she is
very angry to have a young queen hatch out, and does all she can to kill
her. But the workers have spent much time and labor in making this
queen, and they stand close around her to protect her from the jealous
old queen. The honey-bee family, however, has grown so big that there is
room for no new babies in the hive, and that is the reason that the
workers have raised a new queen, so that she may start a new family.

"There is not room in one house for two queens; one must go, and it is
usually old Mrs. Honey-Bee. Surrounded by part of the family, she flies
out of the old home in search of a new place. If she is living in some
one's garden a new hive