240 THE BEE NATION. 



drones' cells, for drones are unnecessary in the first year and 

 are only a loss to the colony, and working bees' eggs will 

 not develop in drones' cells. The queen crawls to the sides 

 where no drones are wanted, across the drones' cells without 

 laying eggs therein. If she had no knowledge of the dif- 

 ferent objects of her egg-laying and was only impelled 

 thereto by an instinct to general egg-laying mechanically 

 controlled, such behavior would be incredible, and it would 

 be a matter of indifference to the queen in what kind of cells 

 she laid her eggs. It is also known that an injury to the 

 last abdominal nerve ganglion makes it impossible for the 

 queen to lay other than drones' eggs, for she can conse- 

 quently no longer voluntarily act on the spermatophore. If, 

 as has been mentioned, the cause is the mechanical pressure 

 of the narrow working-bees' cells on the spermatophore, the 

 queen thus injured would be able to lay male and female 

 eggs as before. There can therefore be no doubt that the 

 queen is able to voluntarily decide the sex of the laid eggs, 

 and that she fertilises them or not with a thorough fore- 

 knowledge in each case of the task before her, just in the 

 same way as she regulates the number of the eggs she lays 

 according to circumstances.* 



This seems the more probable when we learn that the 

 queens seem to know exactly when they have discharged 

 their queenly duties, and in such a case are seized with a 

 presentiment of their appproaching end. The wonderful 

 observation has been made that a queen who, through age 

 or some other weakening circumstance, becomes conscious 

 of her exhaustion, and has communicated this consciousness 

 to her people, provides, in common with them, for the safe 

 succession to the throne, and as soon as this is done gives 

 back the throne and sceptre into the hands of the people, 

 that is, either voluntarily leaves the hive in order to die out- 

 side, or is killed by the bees and thrown out of the hive. 



Perhaps it is a feeling similar to this wonderful perception 

 which, as already said, withholds old queens from making 



* More exact details on this point and on the different explanations 

 offered of it in an appendix to an essay of the famous American bee- 

 master, Charles Dadant, will be found in an essay of the author's, 

 " The German School in opposition to the American " in the " ^Ester- 

 reichischen Bienenzeitung." December, 1879. (Published by Rudolf 

 Mayerhoffer. 



