138 GENERAL NOTES 



But those queens, liatched early in November, hail no 

 oi>j>orrunitY to mate, tor tlie weather turned cold sudden- 

 ly and the time of their rut passed without any oppor- 

 tunity for flight, even thouj^li drones might have- been 

 present. The following spring we found ourselves with 

 seven ju-etty and very prolific drone layers. There eggs 

 were laid as regularly as those of fertilized queens, and 

 their j)rogeny hatched in The most uniform way, small 

 drones from worker cells and large, full size«l drones from 

 drone cells. I do not i-emember that any of thei.' eggs 

 failed to hatch. True, some of them might have been re- 

 moved by the bees, unknown to us, but this does not seem 

 likely. The little drones ajqjeared as able bodied as the 

 large ones, and. according to the Dzierzon tests, must 

 have been proportionally as good as the large ones. It 

 goes without saying that we promptly replaced the 

 queens with other breeding stock, and never did we have 

 better eaily matings tlian that year, since thousands of 

 drones were produced at a time when there are usually 

 very few.'' 



Being then between 1*1 and 22 years of age, I became 

 very thoi-oiighl\- imi)ressed with this evidence of the 

 correctness of the Dzierzon theory, which had, up to that 

 date, a])peared to me only as a possibility. T have, ever 

 since, called it an established fact. Bui ii is very easy 

 to see why an observe)- like Fabre, who had no o])por- 

 tunities to make a test oT this kind, slnmld denounce the 

 theory as entii-ely false. And yet it is very likely that 

 the eggs mentioned b,\ him as not hatching were rendered 

 unju-oductive by some othei- cause than want of 

 fertilization. In my ex])erience 1 have st^n two or three 

 queens whose eggs did not hatch, l)ut never liad an )j>por 

 tunity of ascertain in. <.! the cause. 



However grr-at the genius of Fabre and his powers of 

 bservations. he was, nevertheless, subject to prejudice. 

 Witness his antipathy to Teutonic teachings. Such an 

 antipathy was natural in a Frenchman, writing aft^er the 

 crushing war 1870, but it should not have led to antici- 



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