346 BRITISH BEES. 



is already making her progresses from one side of each 

 comb to the other, and depositing her eggs as rapidly as 

 she can, and is constantly attended by her aides-de-camp, 

 as I have suggested, which act, as they evidently some- 

 times are, as the emissaries of her commands. They 

 consist of ten or twelve or sometimes more, and have 

 been previously described. They are replaced by others 

 as they quit to obey orders, or as they retire fatigued, 

 so that she is always surrounded. The number of eggs 

 she will lay in a day is about two hundred. In doing 

 this she first thrusts her head into a cell to ascertain its 

 fitness, which having done, she withdraws it, and then 

 curving her body she thrusts the apex of her abdomen, 

 which tapers to the extremity for the purpose, into the 

 cell, wherein by means of the sheaths of her curved sting, 

 which act as an ovipositor, she places the egg at the 

 bottom of the cell. It is possibly from some taction of 

 this instrument that she discerns the sizes of the eggs, 

 and thence their respective sex. This process she con- 

 tinues repeating, passing from one side of the comb to 

 the other by means of the passages perforated through 

 it, making the numbers as nearly as possible tally on each 

 side and as opposite to each other as may be, and she 

 will then go forward to further cakes of comb. In this 

 way she lays about ten or twelve thousand in six weeks, 

 depending much upon the propitiousuess of the season, 

 but the rapidity of this laying intermits according to the 

 months; the above estimate is based upon what April 

 and ]May produce, as it slackens during the summer 

 heats and again revives in the autumn, but totally ter- 

 minates with the first cold weather. She thus will lay 

 from thirty to forty thousand or more in a year. 



Apiarians do not state whether the san.e queen heads 



