530 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY. 



tremely difficult to discover even by experts in the art of bee culture. It 

 was generally well known that in the bee-hive all the eggs were usually 

 laid by the queen, whose body contained about 300 various tubes, and who, 

 under favourable conditions, was capable of laying even more than 3000 

 ec«s in the course of twenty- four hours. After the accidental loss or 

 intentional removal of the queen, the bees take some of the eggs remaining 

 in the hive, and by a special feeding of the resulting larvfe are able to pro- 

 duce fresh queens. If, however, it should happen that in a hive which has 

 lost its queen there are no eggs available for this purpose, it is found that 

 some of the workers under some special circumstances, which could not be 

 very clearly explained, became capable of laying eggs, but that such eggs 

 produced drones only. These bees were known as fertile workers, and 

 though there could be no doubt as to their frequent existence, they were 

 very difficult to catch, owing to the fact of their being exactly the same in 

 appearance as the ordinary workers. During the whole of his experience 

 he had never but in three cases been able to secure specimens, and, besides 

 these, only one or two isolated cases of verifying them had occurred in 

 England. In the bottle to which he had referred were two of these fertile 

 workers, having the ovaries drawn out of the bodies and attached to their 

 stings and abdominal plates, so as to show that they really were workers. 

 There was a remarkable peculiarity to be observed in connection with the 

 ovarian tubes of these insects ; every ordinary worker possessed an unde- 

 veloped ovary which it was very difficult both to detect and to dissect ; but 

 when under the influence of some stimulus the worker became fertile, a 

 number of points began to appear in the tubes which afterwards became 

 developed, and it would seem that the eggs were developed in alternation, 

 an examination of the ovarian tubes showing them to contain developed 

 eggs alternating with others in an undeveloped condition (as drawn on the 

 black-board), and of which some very curious instances were seen in the 

 specimens before the meeting. He hoped to be able to mount them, and if 

 successful in deling so, he should have great pleasure in showing them at 

 their next meeting. 



Mr. Tebbs asked if there was any difference in appearance between the 

 ordinary workers and those which Mr. Cheshire had just been describing ? 



Mr. Cheshire said that externally there was no distinguishable ditter- 

 ence between them, though it was possible they might weigh a little more ; 

 dissection made the difference clear at once. They could only be detected 

 when in the liive by the attentions which were paid to them by the other 

 bees. A curious fact in connection with the queen was that although she 

 had much smaller intestines than a worker, she was yet capable of producing 

 nearly four times her own weight of eggs in the course of a day ; and it 

 would naturally seem very remarkable how so much nitrogenous matter 

 could be produced by one whose organs of digestion and assimilation were 

 so inferior in proportionate size, being actually less than those of a worker. 

 But the fact was the queen did not herself digest her own food, but was 

 fed upon a highly nutritive fluid from a gland in the head of the worker, in 

 whose body the process of digestion had been carried on, and who conveyed 

 the product to the queen by a special apparatus connected with the tongue* 

 In the body of the fertile worker it was worth noting that no pollen was 

 found such as formed the food of the ordinary bee, and this showed the 

 fertile worker to be fed, like a queen, by the other bees. 



Mr. Karop inquired how it was that Mr. Cheshire knew that the eggs 

 developed alternately in the way he had stated, seeing that the opportunities 

 for observation were so very rare ? 



