“108 The Worker Bees. 
the abortive ovaries (Fig. 33), are undeveloped females 
Rarely, and probably very rarely except when a colony 
is long or often queenless, as is frequently true of our nuclei 
Fic. 32. : 
Worker-Bee, much magnified, 
these bees are so far developed as to produce eggs, which, 
of course, would always be drone eggs. Such workers— 
known as “fertile” —were first noticed by Riem, while 
Huber saw one in the act of egg-laying. Paul L. Viallon 
and others have seen the same thing often. Several fertile 
workers, sent me by Mr. Viallon, were examined and the 
eggs and ovaries (Fig. 34) were plainly visible. Leuckart 
found, as seen in the figure, the rudiment of the spermatheca 
in both the common and the fertile worker. Except in the 
power to produce eggs, they seem not unlike the other work- 
ers. Huber supposed that these were reared in cells contigu- 
ous to royal cells, and thus received royal food by accident. 
The fact, as stated by Mr. Quinby, that these occur in col- 
onies where queen-larve were never reared is fatal to the 
