282 THE COURTSHIP OF ANIMALS 



and helping himself to honey from the comb, and when 

 full to repletion he seeks some snug corner in which to 

 sleep off his surfeit. In due time, however, he ventures 

 abroad, his hour is at hand. He takes his daily flights 

 abroad in search of a mate, returning home early in the 

 afternoon for his rations, being too indolent or too stupid 

 to draw nectar from the flowers for himself. Thus ior 

 many days he and his brothers disport themselves in 

 riotous living, till one or other of them attains the end 

 for which he was born ; and after a few delirious moments 

 drops earthwards a mutilated corpse. 



But so far only a part of the story of the drone's life- 

 history has been told. Though the son of a queen, he 

 has never had a father ; and should he ever attain to the 

 dignity of fatherhood his posthumous children are 

 all daughters, most of whom die spinsters wdthin six or 

 seven weeks of their birth, worn out by a life of ceaseless 

 toil and drudgery ! 



The queen, it will be remembered, cohabits with the 

 male but once in her life. The sperm-cells then received 

 are stored in a special receptacle and are released during 

 the passage of the egg down the oviduct. In this act 

 of releasing the fertilizing germs a singular economy is 

 practised. In the case of most other creatures myriads 

 of sperm-cells are released for the fertilization of a single 

 egg, and of these but one can possibly attain its goal, 

 the minute aperture or " micropyle " which is the door- 

 way to the germ liberated, in the form of an egg, by 

 the female. The rest die. In the case of the queen bee 

 but one of these precious sperm-cells is liberated at a 

 time. Hence her prolonged ability to produce fertilized 

 eggs. But egg9 destined to produce males, or drones, are 

 never thus fertilized : they are born without the interven- 



