435 



The following data show how much more prolific the queen is 

 when she is well nourished by a large colony : — 



July 7, I took the old queen from a large colony of L. niger 

 americanus under a stone and brought her to the laboratory. At 

 io:oo a. m. I placed her in a vial by herself. By 4:00 p. m. she had 

 laid 125 eggs, an average of 31 an hour, or one every two minutes. 

 I removed her from the vial and placed her in a Petri dish with five 

 workers from the same colony. 



July 9, 9:00 A. M. Moisture from the sponge had collected in 

 the bottom of the Petri dish, and the queen and workers were nearly 

 drowned. The queen, however, had laid 168 eggs. I placed her in 

 a dry vial. She began laying again at 1 1 :45 and by 2 :oo p. m. had 

 laid 48 more eggs. Thus in a little more than two days this queen 

 laid 341 eggs, or more than the average of the total number laid 

 by the four first-year queens in an entire season. 



August 13, I took the old queen from a very large colony of Z,. 

 niger americanus, brought her to the laboratory, and placed her in a 

 Petri dish at 5 :30. I watched her continuously for 30 minutes, dur- 

 ing which time she laid eggs, at fairly regular intervals, at the rate 

 of about one every two minutes. By 6:00 p. m. she had laid 16 

 eggs. By II o'clock the following morning she had laid 166 eggs, 

 an average of 9.5 eggs an hour. Between 11 :oo A. M. and 12 :oo M. 

 she laid 6 more eggs. 



By the beginning of the third year the average colony is so large 

 that, if suitably located, it can furnish sufficient nourishment to 

 cause the queen to produce a much larger number of eggs and also 

 to feed the increased number of larvae. Such a colony might be 

 sufficiently large for the workers to feed a certain number of the 

 larvae heavily enough to produce, not workers, but winged females. 

 Some colonies, however, as those that produced but two workers the 

 first year, might be no larger at the end of the second or even at the 

 end of the third year than the more fortunate ones at the end of 

 the first year. Such colonies would probably not produce females 

 until the fourth or fifth year or even later, on the assumption that 

 the difference in the production of workers and females is a differ- 

 ence in nutrition, which I believe to be the case. If a colony con- 

 taining brood but no queen is supplied with an abundance of food, 

 they will segregate a number of the larvae, feed them more heavily 

 than the others, and cause them to produce queen larvae. 



