Fecundity of ^ueen. 59 



egg-laying? She has nothing else to do, or to feel proud ot. 



Different queens vary as much in fecundity as do differ- 

 ent breeds of fowls. Some queens are so prolific that they 

 fairly demand hives of India rubber to accommodate them, 

 keeping their hives gushing with bees and profitable activ- 

 ity ; while others are so inferior that the colonies make a 

 poor, sickly effort to survive at all, and usually succumb 

 early, before those adverse circumstances which are ever 

 waiting to confront all life on the globe. This lack of 

 fecundity may be due to disease, improper development or 

 to special race or strain. The activity of the queen is gov- 

 erned largely by the activity of the workers. The queen 

 will either lay sparingly, or stop altogether, in the interims 

 of storing honey, while, on the other hand she is stimulated 

 to lay to her utmost capacity when all is life and activity 

 in the hive. As the worker-bees feed the laying queen, 

 it is more than probable that with no nectar to gather, the 

 food is withheld, and so the queen is unable to produce the 

 eggs, which demand a great amount of nutritious food 

 already to be absorbed. Thus the whole matter is doubt- 

 less controlled by the workers. This refusal to lay when 

 nectar is wanting does not hold true, apparently, with the 

 Cyprian and the Syrian bees. 



The old poetical notion that the queen is the revered and 

 admired sovereign of the colony, whose pathway is ever 

 lined by obsequious courtiers, whose person is ever the 

 recipient of loving caresses, and whose will is law in this 

 bee-hive kingdom, controlling all the activities inside the 

 hive and leading the colony whithersoever it may go, is 

 unquestionably mere fiction. In the hive, as in the world, 

 individuals are valued for what they are worth. The queen, 

 as the most itpportant individual, is regarded with solici- 

 tude, and her removal or loss is noted with consternation, 

 as the welfare of the colony is threatened; yet, let the queen 

 become useless, and she is dispatched with the same absence 

 of emotion that characterizes the destruction of the drones 

 when they have become supernumeraries. It is very doubt- 

 ful if emotion and sentimentality are ever moving forces 

 among the lower animals. There are probably certain nat- 

 ural principles that govern in the economy of the hive, and 



