THE BEE NATION. 239 



investigation is satisfactory, as it generally is, she turns 

 round and deposits an egg in it from her abdomen. If this 

 experiment is made impossible to her by cutting off her 

 antennae, she lays no more eggs in the cells ; she runs about 

 uneasily over the comb, lets her eggs fall on the floor, 

 where they dry up and perish, and prefers to stay in the 

 combless parts of the hive, to which only a few specially 

 attached bees follow "her. At last, conscious of her com- 

 plete helplessness and uselessness, she tries to leave the hive, 

 and is not accompanied in her flight by a single working- 

 bee. 



The queen, as a rule, lays only one egg in a cell. If she 

 accidently lets more fall into it the accompanying workers, 

 according to the report of most observers, see to their proper 

 division, but Huber denies this, and maintains that the 

 workers could not grasp the eggs without injuring them, on 

 account of their softness. From time to time the queen 

 rests a little from her severe labor, creeping head first into a 

 wide or drone's cell, and lying there motionless for some 

 time. The position which she takes does not permit the 

 accompanying bees to pay her the attention above described. 

 None the less, they do not neglect, even under these circum- 

 stances, to form a circle round her, and to lick the portion 

 of her abdomen left outside. 



The queen apparently has it in her power to lay either 

 drones' eggs or working-bees' eggs, accordingly as she 

 fertilises or not the eggs passing through her oviducts with 

 the male semen, by pressing the laden spermatophores by 

 aid of voluntary muscles. Fertilised eggs produce working- 

 bees or queens, unfertilised, drones. The latter are laid in 

 the larger or drone cells, the former in the smaller or 

 working-bee cells. The most various explanations, me- 

 chanical and accidental, have been given of the peculiar 

 behavior of the queen, and of the question why she should 

 in the one case fertilise the eggs and not in the other, but 

 none of them have been proved to be true. It seems far 

 more probable that the queen has a clear understanding of 

 the object of her work, and lays drones' eggs or fertilised 

 ones as they are required by circumstances. The bee- 

 raasters know very well that a queen which is brought with 

 a young swarm into a hive which has only drones' cells built 

 in it will rather drop her eggs than deposit them in the 



