THE SEXES OF EGGS. 9 



tains 50,000 young bees, in all stages, from the egg up. 

 These 50,000 young bees came from one queen in three 

 ■weeks. Divide the 50,000 by 21, and it will be found 

 that the average number laid per day for three ■weeks 

 amounts to some hundreds beyond 2000 per day. What 

 prodigious fertility ! What generous feeding of the 

 queen is necessary to repair the ■waste and wear of such 

 fertihty ! We have not yet seen a hive large enough to 

 overtax the laying powers of a queen bee. 



THE SEXES OF EGGS. 



Most ■writers on this subject believe that a healthy and 

 timely-impregnated queen bee lays both male and female 

 eggs — that the male eggs hatch into drones only, and that 

 the female eggs may become either queens or working bees, 

 according to the treatment they receive in their cells. 

 These virriters maintain that a queen is a perfect female, 

 and a worker an imperfect one. They hold that the food 

 supplied to the little worm does not alter the sex, but 

 simply develops its organs of reproduction; in other 

 words, makes it a perfect female. In the case of workers, 

 it is said, the same food is not suppUed ; that though the 

 eggs from which they come are identically the same as 

 those which yield queens, they are fed differently, and 

 hence are born imperfect, with organs undeveloped. It 

 is questioned by some whether the special treatment is , 

 given to the young that become perfect and fully developed 

 females, called queens, or to the young that are dwarfed 

 and crippled into workers. The reader is earnestly re- 

 quested to bear in mind that aU enlightened bee-keepers 

 as well as all bee-historians have not a doubt, or the 

 shadow of one, as to the capability of these female eggs 

 becoming either queens or workers. Six-and-twenty years 

 ago I wrote a short treatise on bees which appeared in 



