THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 109 
the queen, and under exceptionally adverse condi- 
tions egg-laying may be entirely arrested. This 
may also take place in the height of the season, 
and in full favour of sunshine and plenty, if the 
hive is a small one, and the limit of its capacity 
has been reached. The combs will then be full of 
either honey or brood, and the queen must wait 
until laying space can be cleared for her. That 
she is able to do this—that her powers can be 
augmented or restrained, according to the needs 
of the colony, and that the proportion of the sexes 
in the hive can be varied at will to suit like con- 
tifigencies—can only be understood when the 
details of her life-history have been passed under 
review. 
In the normal, prosperous colony, which we are 
now studying, the queen will be in her prime, and 
under natural conditions will remain at the head 
of affairs until she goes out with the first swarm 
in May or June. A queen-bee is at the zenith of 
her fecundity in the second year of her life. After 
that, her egg-laying powers steadily decline, 
although she may live to be four, or even five, 
years old. But the authorities in a hive rarely 
allow a mother-bee to retain her position after she 
has shown signs of waning energy. Preparations 
are at once set on foot for the raising of another 
queen. 
A very old queen will have lost her power to 
lay worker-eggs, and will have become nothing 
