A very old queen will have lost her power to lay worker-eggs, and will have become nothing but a drone-breeder. But the bees are seldom caught napping in this way. Long before this happens the building of the royal cells will have commenced in the hive. A queen-cell has been likened, by various writers, to an acorn, and when half completed it bears a very close resemblance, both in size and shape, to an inverted acorn-cup. This is commonly hung mouth downwards at the side or base of one of the central brood-combs, but it may be placed right in the middle of the comb, in which case the cells around it are cut away to give it air and space. Whether the old queen herself deposits the egg in the royal cell—thus unwittingly supplying the means for her own future dethronement—or whether the worker-bees transfer to it an egg or grub from a common cell, is not yet finally ascertained. As, however, the mere sight of a royal cell usually excites the queen to fury, the chances are that she is never allowed to approach it at any time, and the egg would then be placed there by the worker-bees. But, in the great majority of cases, it is probable that new queens are raised by enlarging an already existing worker-cell, in which an egg has been previously deposited. As far as is known, this is always the case when a young grub is used for the purpose instead of an egg. It is possible, also, that the queen is physically incapable of laying in a royal cell an egg that will produce a female bee; but this curious point will be touched upon at a later stage. [Picture: A Queen-cell]