The Life of the Bee 



follows, therefore, that the queen must 

 possess the power, while laying, of know- 

 ing or determining the sex of the egg, 

 and of adapting it to the cell over which 

 she is bending. She will rarely make a 

 mistake. How does she contrive, from 

 among the myriad eggs her ovaries con- 

 tain, to separate male from female, and 

 lower them, at will, into the unique 

 oviduct ? 



Here, yet again, there confronts us an 

 enigma of the hive ; and in this case one 

 of the most unfathomable. We know 

 that the virgin queen is not sterile ; but 

 the eggs that she lays will produce only 

 males. It is not till after the impregnation 

 of the nuptial flight that she can produce 

 workers or drones at will. The nuptial 

 flight places her permanently in posses- 

 sion, till death, of the spermatozoa torn 

 from her unfortunate lover. These sper- 

 matozoa, whose number Dr. Leuckart 



223 



