124 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
her ovaries. The more food of this kind she re- 
ceives, the greater will be her prolificacy. On the 
other hand, a diminishing allowance will mean a 
corresponding decrease in her egg-laying powers ; 
while, if this rich diet be withheld altogether, and 
she is forced to help herself from the honey-cells, 
the development of these eggs may cease entirely, 
as it actually does in the coldest time of the year. 
Thus the bees play upon her, producing just the 
music needed for their purposes. As the days 
lengthen, and the spring sun gets higher and 
warmer, they gradually waken her docile nature to 
its one paramount task. In the flaming weeks of 
summer she sits at an unending banquet. And 
when autumn comes, with its chilly nights and 
steadily failing sun-glow, the generous fare is 
slowly withdrawn; her retinue thins and disperses; 
at length she becomes a solitary, unmarked 
wanderer again, sipping, with the commonest 
worker, at the plain household sweets. 
How the proportion of the sexes is so unerringly 
regulated by the hive-authorities through their 
influence on the mother-bee, is not so readily ex- 
plained ; nor can it be at present more than shrewd 
conjecture, a backward reckoning from effect to 
cause. Probably the opening or closing of the 
fertilising gland, which decides the sex of the egg, 
is automatic, the attitude of the mother-bee during 
Oviposition determining its action. When she 
\enters the narrow worker-cells, her body is neces- 
