THE SEXES OF EGGS. 13 



commenced by laying in a beautifully regular manner — not 

 a single worker among tliem — some thousands of drone- 

 eggs in worker-cells ; they were aU reared to maturity, 

 and then cast out by the workers. Now, all these that I 

 have referred to were unquestionably healthy and timely- 

 impregnated queens, which, after the first aberration, con- 

 tinued the fulfilment of their functions in a perfectly 

 regular and satisfactory manner. 



" To me the conclusion to be drawn from this appears 

 so logical as to be perfectly irresistible, — that the workers 

 had no control whatever over the sex of the bees. Under 

 your hypothesis they would seem to have indulged the 

 whim of raising some hundreds (or thousands, as the case 

 may be) of drones at a time when they could be of no 

 possible use, only to destroy them as soon as they come 

 to maturity. 



"An ample population, abundant food, and the presence 

 of drone-cells, generally dispose a queen to lay drone-eggs ; 

 and so far as the apiarian can contribute to this statte of 

 things, you are correct in what you say about his being 

 able to command the production of drones at a given time. 

 But more than this, with an old queen he will scarcely 

 ever fail in the attempt ; with a yoimg queen of the cur- 

 rent year he will scarcely ever succeed. This fact, which 

 has been proved over and over again by myself and others, 

 is sufficient to demonstrate that the workers are perfectly 

 imable to determine into which sex eggs shall hatch. If 

 bees had the power of developing eggs, after they were 

 laid, into either males or females at will, the same instinct 

 which impels them to rear perfect females from worker- 

 eggs or young brood, when deprived of their queen, would 

 doubtless lead them, in the absence of drones or drone- 

 brood, to transfonn the remainder of the worker-eggs 

 which they might possess into drones. I need not tell 



