92 INJURIOUS AND USEFUL INSECTS 



humming in the air, and flies abroad. Nearly always she 

 returns in a fertilised state, and then goes out no more, except 

 to accompany a swarm, if such should be sent forth. The 

 presence of a second queen rouses her to a desperate en- 

 counter, in which one of the two perishes. If the workers 

 should rear supplementary queens, as they find it necessary 

 to do at times, they have to restrain the old queen by force 

 from destroying them. 



Once fertilised, the queen can produce fertile eggs during 

 her whole life. It is probable that the sperms received from 

 the male and stored in a special pouch (spenuatheca) can be 

 allowed access to the eggs or not at the pleasure of the queen. 

 Fertilised eggs produce females (workers or queens), unfertil- 

 ised eggs drones. When workers lay eggs, as they sometimes 

 do, these eggs are always unfertilised and yield drones. The 

 queen begins to lay about two days after fertilisation, and 

 continues to lay, with greater or less frequency, according to 

 the needs of the swarm. The eggs are produced most rapidly 

 in early summer, fall off in July and August, and cease 

 altogether at the approach of winter. A queen is prolific for 

 the first two or three years of her life ; in the fourth and fifth 

 years, if she survives so long, her fertility greatly abates. 

 Under favourable conditions a queen can produce 3000 eggs 

 a day, 60,000 in a month, 250,000 to 300,000 in a season, 

 and perhaps a million in her lifetime (Dzierzon). 



The time required for rearing a larva from the egg is not 

 always the same. A new generation of workers can be pro- 

 duced in three weeks ; drones require about three days more ; 

 a queen can be reared in little more than a fortnight. The 

 remarkable fact that queens or workers can be developed at 

 pleasure from the same fertilised eggs is now established 

 beyond question. The question is decided by the quantity 

 and quality of the food supplied to the larva by the workers. 

 When queens are called for, special and unusually large cells 

 of irregular form are built, and the larva; are fed unusually 

 long upon a partially digested nutritive jelly, rich in albumi- 

 noids and relatively deficient in sugar. 



The duration of life is far less in workers and drones than 

 in queens. During one summer the workers are renewed 

 two or three times, but those which enter the dead season 

 often last till the following summer. The drones are suffered 



