QUEENS 



103 



the seieutifie bee-farmer in the pursuit of his daily 

 occupation. Tliese and many other curious phenomena 

 will be placed before the reader in the following pages. 



The queen is the only perfectly developed female in 

 the hive, and the egg producing a worker-bee is apparently 

 in no wise different from one that will finally develop a 

 queen. The monarch then, it may be said, owes her 

 existence as the perfect female, to the food fed to her 

 during the larval growth. Queens in a normal state lay 

 2 kinds of eggs. They present no differences outwardly, 



Fig. 51. Portion of Brood-comb "witli Queen-cells. 



even to the searching eye of the microscope, but when 

 the contained fluid is exposed to view, it reveals the fact 

 that the egg intended to hatch a drone is without any 

 trace of the fertilising medium. This fluid (or semen) 

 is always associated with the egg that is intended to 

 develop into a worker or a queen. It is surely an anomaly 

 to say that the drone hatches from an unfertile egg, 

 yet if we regard the presence of spermatozoa as fertility, 

 it is undoubtedly true. However, let us examine a comb 

 and study the ciueen from egg to imago. 



EGGS. 

 At swarming time there will be no difficult}^ in 

 observing a number of small cups (Fig. 51, No. 1) — 



