THE BEE. 



To make this great laying of drone eggs, her majesty must be 

 at least eleven months old. Supposing that she has been hatched 

 the preceding season in February, she will lay during that sea- 

 son workers' eggs almost exclusively, producing at the most from 

 fifty to sixty drone eggs. But after the winter, at the epoch 

 now referred to, the hive being then filled exclusively with 

 workers, and standing in absolute need of drones to supply 

 suitors to the future queens, she produces drone eggs constantly 

 and exclusively until the commencement of the swarming season, 

 with the exception, however, of a limited number of royal eggs, 

 which she deposits at intervals more or less distant in the royal 

 cells just now mentioned, which the workers occupy themselves 

 in constructing during the great laying. 



The great laying usually continues for about a month, and it 

 is about the twentieth or twenty-first day that the workers begin 

 to lay the foundations of the royal cells. They generally build 

 from sixteen to twenty of them, and sometimes even as many as 

 twenty- seven. When these cells have attained the depth of two- 

 tenths to three-tenths of an inch, the queen deposits in each of 

 them successively a royal egg. Now since the princesses which 

 are to issue from these eggs are destined to ascend the thrones of 

 the emigrant colonies, which are to issue in succession from the 

 hive, it is important that they should arrive at maturity at suc- 

 cessive intervals, corresponding as nearly as possible with the 

 emigration of the swarms. 



The queen acts as if she were conscious of this, for she 

 deposits the royal eggs, not like the drone or worker eggs in rapid 

 and uninterrupted succession, but after such intervals as will 

 insure their arrival at maturity in that slow succession, which 

 will correspond nearly or exactly with the issue of the successive 

 swarms. 



132. It has been already explained that the nurses seal up the 

 cells, at the time at which the grub is ready to undergo its meta- 

 morphosis into a nymph. In accordance with this, and with the 

 successive deposition of the royal eggs, just described, the times of 

 sealing up the series of royal cells are separated by intervals 

 corresponding with those of the deposition of the royal eggs. 



Before the commencement of the great laying, the abdomen of 

 the queen is so enlarged that her movements are seriously impeded, 

 and she would be altogether unable to fly. According as the 

 laying proceeds, she becomes smaller and smaller, and when it 

 has been completed, the royal eggs having been meanwhile depo- 

 sited at regulated intervals, as above described, her majesty 

 recovers her natural form and dimensions, and with them her full 

 bodily activity. This change in the condition of the queen, and 

 66 



