and its Economic Management. 49 
mate within a reasonable time, when she likewise can only 
produce males, whether she does mate with a drone or not; 
and certain it is many of these queens, though delayed in 
the act, do mate, and then commence to deposit eggs 
within three days thereafter, as is the case with the properly 
fertilised queen. 
Non-Virile Drones. 
The majority of prominent bee-keepers assume that the 
males produced by laying workers and non-fertilised queens 
are the same in every respect as those reared from the eggs 
of a fully impregnated queen. In other words, they assure 
us that drones from any non-impregnated mother are virile 
in every sense of the word. 
This is a most erroneous assumption, that should not be 
advanced by any thoughtful and observant bee-keeper. 
Now listen! Mot one of these mistaken, non-observant 
apiarists would pay an average price, nor, indeed, would he 
pay any sum for, nor accept as a properly fertilised queen, one 
that he was assured had been mated to a drone bred from a 
laying worker, or from a arone-breeding unfertilised queen. 
Hence our disbelieving friends expose their weak point, 
and their reasoning tumbles into dust. 
No self-respecting queen-breeder would send out queens 
mated to such non-virile drones, as his business would soon 
be ruined, and deservedly so. 
Queens, Neuters and Virile Drones. 
A normally fecundated queen will deposit eggs which 
produce either queens (perfect females), neuters (undeveloped 
females or workers), or virile drones (males). 
These eggs are all either fertilised or tainted by the 
action of the recent or final sire who mated with the queen 
producing them ; and the fully fertilised mother can produce 
none other but fertilised eggs. 
E 
