THE QUEEN BEE. 49 



The germs of life received by her in her aerial flight from one, 

 and only one, contact must number thousands upon thousands of 

 these germs. Once becoming fertile this fertility remains 

 for two, three, and sometimes as long as five years, but there is 

 never a fresh supply of life germs from the male. Every seed of 

 a plant requires a grain of pollen to fructify it. In like manner, 

 every ovule of matter produced by the queen requires a germ of 

 life to fecundate it. Every germ that is discharged from the 

 spermatheca so far exhausts the supply. The health and strength 

 of the queen may be such that the whole supply of these life- 

 germs may become exhausted ; nevertheless, the queen will stiii 

 go on laying, and the eggs will hatch out living bees. They are 

 always drones. As the germs in the spermatheca diminish m 

 number, so the male population of the hive is augmented. The 

 first reproductive efforts of a queen result in a progeny of female 

 bees — workers and queens. The final efforts produce males — • 

 drones. The line of demarcation between the queen's powers of 

 producing males and females is iiot a sudden cessation of her power 

 to produce females, but is a gradual one and at first unnoticed. 

 As the numerical strength of workers diminishes, so that of the 

 drones increases. How is it so ? Just now I said the virgin's 

 spermatheca was empty, and she went out to get it charged, so 

 that she may be capable of reproduction. Then I said that when 

 these life-germs she has received become exhausted, she still goes 

 on laying, and produces living descendants. Does not this appear 

 to be contradictory ? Yes ; but it is true, nevertheless. St. Paul 

 said, in referring to a future life, "Behold, I show you a mystery." 

 I am doing the same now in relation to bee-life. How do I know ? 

 Because, if from any cause, natural or artificial, the queen bee is 

 prevented from taking her marital flight, the result is the same 

 as if she were an old queen, and in the stages of reproductive de- 

 cay I have mentioned. But if she be debarred from the power 

 of flight, cannot the same results be produced on terra-firma or 

 within the hive? No. Because the results, of a mid-air meeting, 

 are productive of a male and female progeny ; so a queen not 

 having the power of flight, even if she be deprived of that power 

 as soon as she emerges from the cell, produces only males, and it 

 has always been so. "How can these things be?" 



You will remember I said it is the queen that became im- 

 pregnated, and not the egg— the ovary, and not the ovum— a 

 method of reproduction not uncommon in the insect world ; but 

 ia the higher orders of oviparous terrestrial animals this method 



