256 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. 



and that the hinge is well over to one side ; so that the 

 shoulders form a pair of jaws, which open when the limb 

 is bent, and close when it is straightened. The upper 

 jaw has a row of spines which bite on a plate on the 

 lower jaw. With this apparatus, piercing it with these 

 spines, the worker withdraws a wax-plate from its pocket, 

 transfers it to the front legs, and thence to the mouth, 

 where it is laboriously masticated with a salivary secre- 

 tion. Unless it undergoes this process, it lacks the duc- 

 tility requisite for cell-making. 



Within the cells thus constructed of this costly material, 

 the queen-mother lays silvery eggs, from which will be 

 developed workers, drones, and queen-mothers, each in 

 their appropriate cells. And how comes it that, from eggs 

 apparently similar for each egg is a glistening bluish- 

 white oval embossed with delicately netted lines there 

 issue three different kinds of bee ? These three stand to 

 each other in the relation of males (drones), fertile females 

 (queen-mothers), and infertile females (workers). But 

 how comes it that the males are all developed in one set 

 of cells ; that the majority of eggs, those in the smaller 

 hexagonal cells, produce females that are infertile; and 

 that only the few, laid in royal cells, reach their full 

 sexual development ? It is well known that most of the 

 higher animals are developed from eggs in which a male 

 and a female element have entered into fertile union. 

 It is not so with drones. The queen-mother, after her 

 short marriage flight, carries with her, in a special storage 

 reservoir, that with which she can fertilize each egg as it 

 is laid. From eggs so fertilized female bees, perfect or 

 imperfect, are developed. But from eggs from which 

 drones are to spring, the queen-mother withholds the 

 fertilizing fluid. That drones are unfathered is one of 

 the strange results of modern zoological investigation. 



