28o THE COURTSHIP OF ANIMALS 



number of eggs produced ; while even the sex of the 

 resultant larva is apparently also under their control. 



During that brief, weird honeymoon in the clouds she 

 received a store of spermatozoa, the fertilizing male germs, 

 sufficient for all the eggs she can ever lay, and they may 

 amount to nigh on a million. Incredible as this may 

 seem, their purpose is yet more so ; for they are destined 

 to be expended solely in the production of female offspring 

 doomed for the most part to perpetual spinsterhood. One 

 youngster in ten thousand may attain to a higher state, 

 may, if Fate wills, become a queen and mother. And 

 because of this need for mothers to carry on the race, 

 this extraordinary state of affairs has been brought about. 

 All is under the control of her daughters — the spinster- 

 workers. As she proceeds on her rounds of egg-laying an 

 attendant crowd waits upon her, controlling her actions 

 by gentle caresses. As she passes from cell to cell, the 

 cradles of the young that are to be, she thrusts down her 

 abdomen and lays an egg in each. The cells destined to 

 produce the workers are the smallest, those for drones 

 are larger, and those for queens are largest of all, and the 

 walls are formed of pure pollen, not of wax as are those 

 of the workers and drones. But it would seem that she 

 never lays an egg in any of the last named. The sight of 

 a queen-cell rouses her to fury. These cells, then, are 

 filled by the workers, who remove the requisite number 

 of worker-eggs from the cells in which they were laid and 

 deposit them in the queen-cradles. The larvae at hatching, 

 and for the first three days of Hfe, differ in no wise from 

 their sisters around them. Their Royal state is determined 

 solely by the food which is administered to them. This 

 consists of " bee-jelly," which is furnished in abundance : 

 a white, shining liquid, regurgitated by the ever-zealous 



