34. THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
time breeding goes actively forward, by asserting 
that the worker-bees immaculately conceive of the 
drones for the season, their summer impregnation 
sufficing until the drones reappear in the May of 
the following year. Thus, without guessing it, he 
was very near the discovery of one of the most 
astounding facts in Nature—that the queen-bee of 
a hive, after a single traffic with a drone, continues 
to produce fertile eggs for the rest of her life, which 
may extend to as long as three, or even four, years. 
Butler’s book is rich in the quaint bee-lore of his 
times. He tells us the queen-bee has under her 
“subordinate Gouvernours and Leaders. For 
difference from the rest they beare for their crest 
a tuft or tossel, in some coloured yellow, in some 
murrey, in manner of a plume; whereof some 
turne downward like an Ostrich-feather, others 
stand upright like a Hern-top. In less than a 
quarter of an hour,” he assures us, ‘‘ you may see 
three or foure of them come forth of a good stall ; 
but chiefly in Gemini, before their continuall 
labour have worne these ornaments.” And any 
warm spring or summer morning, if you watch a 
hive of bees at work, you may chance upon much 
the same thing. In some flowers, notably the 
evening primrose, the pollen-grains have a way of 
clinging together in threads; and these festoons 
often catch in the antennz of the foraging bees, 
giving much the same appearance of a plume, or 
tassel, as Butler saw in his day. 
