162 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE 



rearing young, I shall consider them later on. Now we 

 have to pass to the labours incidental to propagation. 



All the eggs are laid by one queen, who requires during 

 this season a large amount of nourishment, so much, 

 indeed, that ten or twelve working bees (i.e. sterile females) 

 are set apart as her feeders. Leaving the ( royal cell,' 

 she walks over the nursery-combs attended by a retinue 

 of workers, and drops a single egg into each open cell. 

 It is a highly remarkable fact that the queen is able to 

 control the sex of the eggs which she lays, and only 

 deposits drone or male eggs in the drone cells, and 

 worker or female eggs in the worker cells the cells pre- 

 pared for the reception of drone larvae being larger than 

 those required for the worker larvae. Young queens lay 

 more worker eggs than old queens, and when a queen, 

 from increasing age or any other cause, lays too large a 

 proportion of drone eggs, she is expelled from the com- 

 munity or put to death. It is remarkable, also, under 

 these circumstances, that the queen herself seems to know 

 that she has become useless, for she loses her propensity 

 to attack other queens, and so does not run the risk of 

 making the hive virtually queenless. There is now no 

 doubt at all that the determining cause of an egg turn- 

 ing out male or female is that which Dzierzon has shown, 

 namely, the absence or presence of fertilisation unferti- 

 lised eggs always developing into males, and fertilised 

 ones into females. The manner, therefore, in which a 

 queen controls the sex of her eggs must depend on some 

 power that she has of controlling their fertilisation. 



The eggs hatch out into larvae, which require constant 

 attention from the workers, who feed them with the chyle 

 or bee-bread already mentioned. In three weeks from 

 the time that the egg is deposited, the white worm-like 

 larva has passed through its last metamorphosis. When 

 it has emancipated itself its nurses assemble round it to 

 wash and caress it, as well as to supply it with "food. 

 They then clean out the cell which it has left. 



When so large a number of the larvae hatch out as to 

 overcrowd the hive, it is the function of the queen to lead 

 forth a swarm. Meanwhile several larval queens have been 



