118 H YMENOPTERA . 



cells, ■which are placed on the edge of the comb, and in those 

 the queen-larvtB are fed with rich and choice nourishment. 

 As soon as the first of the new brood of queens is excluded 

 from its cell, which it indicates by a peculiar buzzing noise, it 

 deserts the old queen, carrying away with it a part of the 

 swarm, and thus forms a new colon}'. The recently excluded 

 queen then takes its marriage flight high in the air with a 

 drone, and on its return undertakes the management of the 

 hive, and the dut}- of laying eggs. AVhen another queen is 

 disclosed, the same process of forming a new colony goes on. 

 "When the suppl}' of young queens is exhausted, the workers 

 fall upon the drones and destroy them without merc}'. The 

 first brood of workers \i\e about six weeks in summer, and 

 then give wa}^ to a new brood. Mr. J. G. Desborough states 

 that the maximum period of the life of a worker is eight months. 

 The queens are known to live five j'ears, and during their whole 

 life \a.j more than a million eggs (V. Berlepsch). Langstroth 

 states that "during the height of the breeding season, she 

 will often, under favorable circumstances, la}^ from 2,000 to 

 3,000 eggs a day." According to Von Siebold's discovery 

 only the queens' and workers' eggs are fertilized by sperm- 

 cells stored in the receptaculum seminis, and these she can 

 fertilize at will, retaining the power for four or five j-ears, 

 as the muscles guarding the duct leading from this sperm-bag 

 are subject to her will. Drone eggs are laid by unfertilized 

 queen-bees, and in some cases even by worker-bees. This last 

 fact has been confirmed by the more recent obser^'ations of 

 Mr. Tegetmeier, of London. 



Principal Leitch, according to Tegetmeier, has suggested the 

 theory that a worker egg may develop a queen, if transferred 

 into a queen-cell. "It is well known that bees, deprived of 

 their queen, select several worker-eggs, or very young larvaj, 

 for the purpose of rearing queens. The cells in Avhich these 

 eggs are situated are lengthened out and the end turned down- 

 ward." He suggests that the development into a queen was 

 caused by the increased temperature of the queen-cell, above 

 that of the worker-cells. 



But Messrs. F. Smith and Woodbury (Proceedings of the 

 Entomological Society of London, Januar^^ 2, 1862) support F. 



