This engraving represents a section of comb in a miniature comb frame, containing all the different cells found in a hive. At the top are cells for storing honey. At the extreme right, near the bottom, is a queen cell complete, as it appears in queen raising, or in one week after a swarm has been deprived of its queen, in a full stock, or as it is found in stocks that swarm naturally, at the time the _first_ swarm issues. Though often found in different places on the comb, and often to the number of a half dozen or more in one stock or hive, yet its relative position is _always the same_. It will always present the same appearance, whether at the edges or on other parts of the comb. Near the queen cell is seen the worker cells, _containing brood_ in all stages of growth, from the tiny egg just deposited by the queen, to the full-grown grub, or young bee. Near the worker cells, at the bottom, are the empty drone cells. Breeding. The natural increase of the honey bee is very imperfectly understood by the great majority of bee keepers. Very many suppose that young bees are raised only in the warm summer months, and their ideas of the _modus operandi_ of increase are exceedingly vague. I find that strung stocks have maturing brood nearly every month in the year--have found brood in stocks in December and January. The queen lays all the fertile eggs in the swarm; consequently all increase is dependent on her. I say the queen lays all the _fertile_ eggs, because occasionally under certain circumstances we find eggs laid by workers, but under my observation such eggs never mature. Egg-laying workers are known to be such, by eggs being found in stocks that have been deprived of their queen, and the means of rearing another. This is one of the wonders of nature, of which no satisfactory solution has been given. The points established as to the sex of bees are these: the queen is a fully developed female; the drones are fully developed males; the worker,--_what is it?_ The worker is said by some to be neuter. If this last is true, how are the eggs produced? Others say the worker is a female with generative organs _not fully developed!_ A pretty nice point--to credit them with the power to produce eggs, without imparting vitality sufficient to germinate. We will leave this knotty question, as it is of no consequence in the practical management of bees for profit. Suffice it then to say, the queen is the mother of the entire family, and without a queen no swarm of bees can long