28 THE BEE-KEEPER’S MANUAL. 
To obtain this result with absolute uniformity, it 
must be essential that all worker cells and all 
queens’ bodies should be of mathematically the same 
size, and that the one should be inserted into the 
other in the same invariable posture and angle! For 
how otherwise could such exquisite delicacy be regu- 
lated, except by an adjustment controlled by the 
queen’s own will—a gentle touch against one side of 
the cell, that was as easily effected in a wide as in a 
narrow one? But there is no conceivable reason to 
drive us to even this last hypothesis, for it is at 
variance with all the analogies of nature that the 
queen should possess an organ which she has no 
power within her of controlling. We may therefore 
dismiss every vestige of this uncalled-for supposition, 
and be satisfied, on the one hand, that just as the 
workers know the sex for which they are constructing 
the cells, so the queen too knows the sex of them when 
they are constructed; and on the other, that as in her 
rounds she comes upon each class of cells, she adapts 
her eggs by her own power accordingly. The demon- 
strations of Von Berlepsch have satisfactorily proved 
such to be the case, and the mechanical Wagner 
theory may now be said to be melted into air.* 
The fact of the descent of male bees from the 
mother alone can be made obvious to the comprehen- 
* The Baron proves his case by the citation of a host of exceptional 
instances in which the space within the cells could not possibly influence 
the result—such as the hatching of drones from old and thickened 
cells na larger than those of workers; slender qu-ens laying worker 
ges as extensively as larger ones ; workers issuing from newly formed 
cells which had no sédes when the eggs were deposited ; and the hatch- 
ing of workers by thousands from drone cells if the queen is kept in a 
hive containing no others, 
egos 
