12 handy book of bees. 



Letter Second. 



" Sept. SOth, 1869. 



" Mt dear Mr Pettigeew, — I am far from presuming 

 to teach you, but -will simply place facts before you in 

 the light in -which they present themselves to me, and 

 must leave you to decide -whether they agree with your 

 opinions or with my own. 



" In the first place, I must agree to differ from you 

 in toto with regard to excluding the eggs laid by virgin 

 queens from consideration. To my mind they throw so 

 much light on the subject that they may really be said to 

 decide the question. These queens lay eggs which cer- 

 tainly are of a fixed sex, for under no circumstances do 

 they hatch into females. Anatomical examination proves 

 the males hatched from them to be perfect in their kind, 

 nor do they differ one iota from the male offspring of 

 fecundated queens. A priori, therefore, the conclusion is 

 to my mind inevitable, that, no matter whether laid by 

 perfect queens, drone -breeders, or fertile workers, the 

 eggs which produce males are in all cases identical ; and 

 that if the sex be unalterable in some eggs, it must, in the 

 absence of irrefragable evidence to the contrary, be equally 

 so in all. The raising a queen from a worker egg or grub 

 is quite a different matter, consisting as it does merely in 

 the development of organs which would otherwise remain 

 dormant, and not in any respect reversing the sex. 



"A 'healthy and timely-impregnated queen' sometimes 

 begins by laying a confused mixture of worker and drone 

 eggs in worker-oeUs ; these all receive their appropriate 

 coverings, causing the surface of the comb to present a 

 curiously uneven surface ; after a while this irregftlarity 

 disappears, and worker-eggs only are laid in the usual 

 manner. I had one queen which, after impregnation, 



