Character of Queen. 97 
fast of them. If the queen find the cell to her liking, she 
turns about, inserts her abdomen, and in an instant the tiny 
egg is glued in position (Fig. 24, 5) to the bottom of the 
cell. 
The queen, when considered in relation to the other bees 
of the colony, possesses asurprising longevity. It is not 
uncommon for her to attain the age of three years in the 
full possession of her powers, while queens have been 
known to do good work for five years. Lubbock has queen 
ants in his nests that are thirteen years old, and still they are 
vigorous layers. Queens, often at the expiration of one, 
two, three or four years, depending on their vigor and ex- 
cellence, either cease to be fertile, or else become impotent 
to lay impregnated eggs—the spermatheca having become 
-emptied of its sperm-cells. In such cases the workers 
usually supersede the queen, that is, they rear a new queen 
before all the worker-eggs are gone, and then destroy the 
old one. 
It sometimes happens, though rarely, that a fine-looking 
queen, with the full-formed ovaries and large spermatheca 
well-filled with male fluid, will deposit freely, but none of 
the eggs will hatch. Readers of bee-papers know that I 
have frequently received such for dissection. The first I 
ever got was aremarkably fine looking Italian, received 
from the late Dr. Hamlin, of Tennesse. All such queens 
that I have examined seem perfect, even though scrutinized 
with a high power objective. We can only say that the 
egg is at fault, as frequently transpires with higher animals, 
even to the highest. These females are barren; through 
some fault with the ovaries, the eggs grown therein are 
sterile. To detect just what is the trouble with the egg is 
a very difficult problem, if it is capable of solution at all. 
I have tried to determine the ultimate cause, but without 
success. Cases have also been observed where mated and 
impregnated queens fail to lay impregnated eggs. Here 
‘the delicate organism of the spermatheca and its duct is at 
fault. Queens.that have been chilled, as shown by Siebold, 
Leuckart and our own Langstroth, are often made drone- 
layers—that is, they only lay unimpregnated eggs. I have 
also had one queen that produced many hermaphroditic 
