28 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE- 



but incnmplefe. The queen, like drones and workers, is also 

 posthumous, and is the only one capable of fecundation. Her one 

 duty is simple, but very exhaustive. It is that of egg-laying. 

 During early spring she is capable of laying 2000 to 3000 eggs a 

 day; that is, if she is one of a strong colony a colony containing 

 plenty of nurse-bees, and also plenty of foragers. If her daily 

 count of eggs fall short of this there is something wrong with the 

 queen, the other inmates of the hive, or the bee-master. 



Shiemenz says, "the queen's body-weight is 100 grammes, the 

 eggs in her ovaries half that weight, and that she produces in eggs 

 her body- weight 110 times in a year." Cheshire says "she lays her 

 own weight (in eggs) daily." To keep up this enormous drain, 

 her system requires a constant supply of very highly-nutritious or 

 egg-producing food. Indeed, during her laying-season she has no 

 time to digest food, to say nothing of the time required to feed 

 herself. Her feeding is done by proxy, and her digestion is largely 

 performed by working-bees. 



Schonfeld says "that this queen-food is 2J'>''>dnced, not secreted, 

 in the chyle-stomach of the workers, and is pure chyle-food." 

 D'zierzon calls it hee-7nilk, and Dr. A. von Planta by chemical 

 analysis has proved the truth of the assertion. 



The queen-cell, as is seen from the diagram, is in no way even 

 similar to the drones' and workers' ; the two latter are built of 

 wax, compactly put together, and almost horizontal. Queen-cells 

 are perpendicular, with their openings upwards ; and according to 

 Dr. A. von Planta and others, "their sides, as well as their 

 cappings, are porous, and consist of wax and pollen." He also 

 says that this porosity is of physiological importance for the vital 

 functions of the larvae, and is more pronounced in the sides of 

 queen-cells than in the worker and drone cells (of which I shall 

 treat further on) ; and it is highly essential to be so when "svich a 

 precious creature as a queen has to breathe therein." 



In such cell, in early spring, if there is a fairly good honey- 

 flow, the mother-bee will deposit an egg. All the egg-germs within 

 the ovaries of a queen bee are uni -sexual (males) ; nevertheless it 

 is within the queen's power, according to season or requirements, 

 to differentiate the sexual character of the egg-germ, by (as it 

 passes through the ovaduct) permitting it to receive a germ of 

 spermatozoa before it is deposited in the brood-cell. When thus 

 the sexual character of the egg is changed, it will produce a female 

 — one that is perfect and complete, or one that is perfect and 

 incomplete. If it is to become a mother-bee, the et^g that has 



