Reproduction in the Honey Bee. 557 
cannot account for the results of some of Huber’s expe- 
riments with regard to such queens, unless it be that the 
confinement to which they were subjected had, in some 
way, affected their mstinct, and produced a change in 
the character of their fertility ; for according to my expe- 
rience, when queens are allowed full liberty of action, 
they never become drone-breeders so early as he states. 
On the contrary, I have had queens which only began 
to lay worker-egegs six weeks after their birth. Of 
course, I had no proof as to when they were impreg- 
nated, but presumed that they oviposited shortly after 
fecundation, the same as other queens do. In a few 
instances drone eggs were laid first, and workers after- 
wards. Three such abnormal cases of laying have occurred 
in my experience, but I can offer no explanation of the 
cause of these anomalies. A curious case is narrated by 
Huber, which also shows that fecundation does not 
always secure a normal state of laying. He reared 
queen on the 4th October, and on the 3lst of the same 
month she brought back from her “ wedding flight ” 
undoubted proofs of her amours, and yet that queen, 
when she began to lay in March following, only pro- 
duced drones. Of course Huber ascribed this to re- 
tarded impregnation. 
There is one peculiarity in the conduct of young 
abnormal queens, according to my experience, which I 
think worth noticing. It is this, that they do not ovi- 
posit so early as perfectly fecundated queens. Indeed, 
I have had them for months in the hive before they ovi- 
posited, and some perished without laying at all, remain- 
ing to the last perfectly sterile; whereas, in the case of 
true fecundated queens, weather being favourable, they 
generally begin to lay when they are about eight or ten 
days old. This seems to me rather perplexing, if I dis- 
sociate the act of fecundation from oviposition. I have 
in my apiary at the present time a young queen up- 
wards of four weeks old, and she has been abroad too, 
but in consequence of the prevailmg cold weather, I 
judge she has not yet been fecundated, for she has not 
yet laid an egg.* Why is this, if fecundation is not 
necessary to her becoming even a drone-producer ? 
* This queen I observed abroad on the twenty-seventh day of her age. 
She had not laid on the thirtieth, but a more recent examination shows 
TR. ENT. SOC. THIRD SERIES, VOL. V. PART VII.—DEC. 1867, 
RR 
