OR, MANUAt OF ThS APIARY. 119 



where one side is worker, the other drone. It is very probable 

 that these peculiarities arise from a diseased condition of the 

 queen, or else from diseased spermatozoa. I have known one 

 queen, many of whose bees were thus abnormal. If a queen 

 is not impreg'nated for three or four weeks, she often com- 

 mences to lay without impregnation, and then is a " drone- 

 layer," and, of course, worthless. She may lay as regularly 

 as if impregnated, though this is not usual. She is, of course, 

 betrayed by the higher cappings, and exclusive drone-brood. 



The function of the queen is simply to lay eggs, and thus 

 keep the colony populous, and this she does with an energy 

 that is fairly startling. A good queen in her best estate will 

 lay two or three thousand eggs a day. I have seen a queen in 

 my observing hive lay for some time at the rate of four eggs 

 per minute, and have proved by actual computation of brood- 

 cells that a queen may lay over three thousand eggs in a day. 

 Both Langstroth and Berlepsch saw queens lay at the rate of 

 six eggs a minute. The latter had a queen that laid three 

 thousand and twenty-one eggs in twenty-four hours, by actual 

 count, and in twenty days she laid fifty-seven thousand. This 

 queen continued prolific for five years, and must have laid, 

 says the Baron, at a low estimate, more than 1,300,000 eggs. 

 Dzierzon says queens may lay 1,000,000 eggs, and I think these 

 authors have not exaggerated. As already stated, a queen 

 may lay nearly double her weight of eggs daily. Yet, with 

 even these figures as an advertisement, the queen-bee can not 

 boast of superlative fecundity, as the queen white-ant — an 

 insect closely related to the bees in habits, though not in struc- 

 ture, as the white-ants are lace-wings, and belong to the order 

 Neuroptera (Isoptera), which includes our day-flies, dragon-flies, 

 etc. — is known to lay over 80,000 eggs daily. Yet this poor, 

 helpless thing, whose abdomen is the size of a man's thumb, 

 and composed almost wholly of eggs, while the rest of her 

 body is no larger than the same in our common ants, has no 

 other amusement ; she can not walk ; she can not even feed 

 herself, or care for her eggs. What wonder then that she 

 should attempt big things in the way of egg-laying ? She has 

 nothing else to do, or to feel proud of. 



Different queens vary as much in fecundity as do different 



