IN THE HONEY-BEE. 59 



from a fecundated queen, the case may probably occur in one 

 bee-hive or another, that, by some confusion or disturbance in 

 the regular distribution of the food, some of the royal-food falls 

 to the lot of one or several worker-larvae in the neighbourhood of 

 a queen's-cell, into which royal-food is carried, by which their 

 sexual organs are more or less developed. By this influence the 

 development of the female genitalia may have been abnormally 

 elevated in a worker, up to the power of laying true eggs*. Such 

 egg-laying workers, however, always remain unfecundated ; they 

 do not feel like perfect female Bees, and undertake no wedding- 

 flight ; which, indeed, would be of no use to them, as the deve- 

 lopment of their copulative and fecundative organs has not kept 

 pace with that of their ovaries and oviducts. The external 

 sexual organs, as well as the seminal receptacle, remain abortive 

 in these egg-laying workers, for which reason they are not in a 

 condition to copulate and receive fertilizing semen. They will 

 therefore only be able to lay unfecundated eggs, from which, if 

 they actually arrive at development, only male Bees are pro- 

 duced, no matter whether they were laid in worker-cells or drone- 

 cells. The cause of the production of an excess of drones and 

 crooked combs in a queenless hive is therefore, that as regards 

 the nature of her deposited eggs, an egg-laying worker-bee is in 

 exactly the same position as an egg-laying virgin queen, — both 

 can only be the parents of drones. 



Why the egg- laying workers can only lay unfertilized eggs, I 

 have already explained in my letter to Baron von Berlepschf. 

 At that time, indeed, I had not been enabled to dissect an egg- 

 laying worker-bee ; so that the principal proof of the correctness 



* Huber (Nouvelles Obs. sur les Abeilles, p. 202) was already acquainted 

 with these occurrences in the bee-hive, and endeavoured to explain them in 

 the same way. 



[Hunter's observations had not extended his knowledge beyond the fol- 

 lowing point : — " As soon as a few combs are formed, the female Bee begins 

 laying of eggs. As far as I have been able to observe, the queen is the only 

 Bee that propagates, although it is asserted that the labourers do. Her first 

 eggs in the season are those which produce labourers, then the males, and 

 probably the queen. This is the progress in the Wasp, Hornet, Bumble- 

 bee, &c. However, it is asserted by Riem, that when a hive is deprived of a 

 queen, labourers lay eggs." — "On Bees," Phil. Trans., 1/^2, p. 152.— R. O.] 



t See Rienenzeitung, 1854, p. 231. 



