THE INHABITANTS OF THE HIVE 33 



love, and any sort of a prince, however lowly, is 

 acceptable. Thus does many a fine, highly bred 

 queen return to her hive, to bestow upon her progeny 

 the undesirable traits of some low-bred drone. This 

 is one reason why it is so difficult to keep an apiary 

 of pure blood; and these mesalliances of queens are 

 a source of much tribulation to the bee-keeper. 

 She returns from her wedding journey with a part of 

 the reproductive organs of her mate in her possession, 

 often still visible, but soon after withdrawn into her 

 body. With the sperm cells now under her control, 

 she will fertilise the eggs of perhaps a million workers, 

 more or less, which she may mother during her life 

 of three or four years. 



Biologists have of late achieved the miraculous 

 in being able to stimulate the unfertilised eggs of sea- 

 urchins and starfish, so that they will develop. The 

 queen bee is able to do this with her own eggs. 

 When the time comes for drones to be developed, 

 she lays unfertilised eggs, which, unfailingly, produce 

 the drones. If our poor human queens possessed 

 this power of producing male heirs at will, much 

 trouble would have been saved to many of them and, 

 to some of them, their heads. However, the perfect 

 socialists do most things better than we. 



As soon as the queen returns from her honeymoon, 

 which is usually taken from eight to ten days from 

 the time she issues, she acts decidedly like a business 

 person. She runs about on the comb, pokes her head 

 into a cell to see if it is all ready, and then, turning 

 about, thrusts her abdomen in and neatly glues an 



