274 MENTAL FACULTIES sec. 



our bee journals by bee-keepers in which workers copulated 

 with drones. These cases have excited a degree of incredulity 

 and of sensation for which there is no justification. For since 

 the workers are merely imperfect females, it can cause no 

 surprise if their sexual organs are in occasional instances 

 more completely developed — perhaps through the larvae 

 being accidentally better nourished — or even if they show 

 the instinct of copulation. It is, moreover, known that 

 workers in hives that have no queen sometunes lay eggs, and 

 that from these drones are hatched. These exceptional cases 

 among worker bees afford a perfect transition to the conditions 

 which normally occur among humble-bees. In these the 

 workers still regularly lay drone -eggs, indeed, the earliest 

 brood of workers, the small workers, can lay drone-eggs only, 

 while the large workers or small females are said to be able, 

 as remarked above, under certain circumstances to lay female- 

 eggs. Thus the workers of the humble-bees are not yet, 

 like those of the hive -bees, exclusively workers. But the 

 influence of nutrition is here directly before our eyes. The 

 first brood of workers, laid at a time when the queen has to 

 do everything herself or with the aid of few workers, can of 

 course not be so well fed as the second brood, produced when 

 the whole of the first brood render assistance. This better 

 nourished brood, according to Hoffer, have developed sexual 

 organs : their more highly nourished condition shows itself 

 also in their greater size, and they sometimes lay eggs from 

 which females are hatched, which must therefore be fer- 

 tilised. Lastly follow the young queens, whose larvae, 

 with the assistance of both broods of workers, can be 

 fed best of all, and the eggs of which have likewise 

 received by fertilisation an important addition of nutritive 

 material. 



The present conditions among bees must have had a 

 similar origin, but in them the complete evolution of the 



