22 HANDY BOOK OF BEES. 



to acknowledge the mistake we have made all otir life 

 long. 



The same test cotdd be applied to hives that have 

 swarmed. Four or five days after the first swarms have 

 left, cut out the royal oeUs, and transplant a few eggs in 

 drone-cells as described above. This experiment is within 

 the reach of very inexperienced persons, and it is hoped 

 that in a short time all doubt and scepticism will be 

 removed. 



But the reader may say that Mr Woodbury has not the 

 shadow of a doubt on his mind.that eggs are of different 

 sexes, male and female. 



I had intended to examine minutely every paragraph 

 of Mr Woodbury's letters, but as we are anxious to bring 

 this chapter to a conclusion, we shall notice only a few of 

 them. 



Mr W. says, — " A young and prolific queen of the cur- 

 rent year, in the full flow of worker- egg laying, can scarcely 

 be induced, under any circumstances, to deposit drone- 

 eggs ; but year by year she gets to lay them with greater 

 facility, till in extreme old age she may become incapable 

 of laying any others. To my poor comprehension, it seems 

 perfectly impossible to reconcile these facts with your 

 theory, that her eggs are throughout all of one kind." 

 Stop a little. We have known 7nany queens die of old 

 age, but their eggs till the last were capable of being 

 hatched into either males or females. When a queen dies 

 of old age in the breeding season^and queens generally 

 die then — the bees almost invariably set a considerable 

 number of eggs in royal cells, and these hatch into females. 

 It is not a fact in our experience that the eggs of a queen, 

 timely impregnated, ever become incapable of hatching 

 into workers and queens. 



Take another statement of Mr W. " The ovaries of a 



