understood; as nearly as I am able to spell it, it is "tse-ep, tse-e-e-ep, tse-e-ep, tsep, tsp, tsp, ts," in a sort of diminuendo. She makes the noise when she discovers another queen cell; if there is within this cell a full-fledged queen, she pipes back, but it sounds quite differently and the note is more like "quock, quock." This piping of queens is especially evident before an after-swarm is to issue. The queen will also pipe when the bees gather about her and try to ball her, which is often the fate of a new queen introduced into a colony not ready to receive her. In this case the note is one of righteous anger at the indignity to her royal person. She makes this piping with some vocal instrument, not well understood. Her wings vibrate tremulously while she is piping, but she can pipe quite as vociferously after her wings have been entirely cut off.
After she has made good her title to empire, the queen thinks about marriage; some warm day she will run out of the hive to see how the world looks, and especially to determine beyond doubt upon just what point of the universe her own hive is situated. The first flight of the queen bee is very pretty to see. She makes many graceful circles about, and plays in the sunshine as if she were thoroughly enjoying herself. When she finally leaves the hive to find a prince, she makes several little detours, always coming back so that she can commit to memory, beyond peradventure, the home place, and then off she goes in the sunshine to find her lover. Unfortunately she is not discriminating in the matter of
