Longevity and Fimetion of Queai. 77 



they rear a new queen, before all the worker-eggs are gone, 

 and then destroy the old one. 



It sometimes happens, though rarely, that a fine-looking 

 queen, with fuU-formed ovaries and large spermatheca well- 

 filled with male fluid, wiU deposit freely, but none of the eggs 

 will hatch. Eeaders of bee-papers know that I have frequent- 

 ly received such for dissection. The first I ever got was a 

 remarkably fine looking Italian, received from the late Dr. 

 Hamlin, of Tennessee. All such queens that I have examined 

 seem perfect, even though scrutinized with a high power ob- 

 jective. We "can only say that the egg is at fault, as fre- 

 quently transpires with higher animals, even to the highest. 

 These females are barren ; through some fault with the ovaries, 

 the eggs grown therein are sterile. To detect just what is the 

 trouble with the egg is a very difficult problem, if it is capable 

 of solution at all. I have tried to determine the ultimate 

 cause, but without success. 



The function of the queen is simply to lay eggs, and thus 

 keep the colony populous, and this she does with an energy 

 that is fairly startling. A good queen in her best estate will 

 lay two or three thousand eggs a day. I have seen a queen 

 in my oberving hive lay for some time at the rate of four 

 eggs per minute, and have proved by actual computation of 

 brood cells that a queen may lay over three thousand eggs 

 in a day. Langstroth and Berlepsch both saw queens lay at 

 the rate of six eggs a minute. The latter had a queen that 

 laid three thousand and twenty-one eggs in twenty-four hours, 

 by actual count, and in twenty days she laid fifty-seven thou- 

 sand. • This queen continued prolific for five years, and must 

 have laid, says the Baron, at a low estimate more than 1,300,- 

 000 eggs. Dzierzon says queens may lay 1,000,000 eggs, and I 

 think these authors have not exaggerated. • Yet, with even 

 these figures as an advertisement, the queen bee cannot boast 

 of superlative fecundity, as the queen white-ant — an insect 

 closely related to the bees in habits, though not in structure, 

 as the white-ants are lace-wings and belong to the sub-order 

 Neuroptera, which includes our day-flies, dragon-flies, etc. — 

 is known to lay over 80,000 eggs daUy. s*. Yet this poor help- 

 less thing, whose abdomen is the size of a man's thumb and 

 composed almost wholly of eggs, while the rest of her body is 

 not laigec-thau.the^same in our common ants hiusnoo&er 



