THE QUEEN. 59 



135. To settle the question beyond the possibility of 

 doubt, we submitted this queen to Professor Leidy for mi- 

 croscopic examination. The following is an extract from 

 his report: "The ovaries were filled with eggs, the poison- 

 sac full of fluid; and the spermatheca distended with a per- 

 fectly colorless, transparent, viscid liquid, without a trace of 

 spermatozoids." 



136. On examining this same colony a few days later, we 

 fomid satisfactory evidence that these drone-eggs were laid 

 by the queen which had been removed. No fresh eggs had 

 been deposited in the cells, and the bees on missing her had 

 begmi to build royal cells, to rear, if possible, another queen. 

 Two of the royal cells were in a short time discontinued; 

 while a third was sealed over in the usual way, to undergo 

 its changes to a perfect queen. As the bees had only a drone- 

 laying queen, whence came the female egg from which they 

 were rearing a queen? 



At first we imagined that they might have stolen it from 

 another hive; but on opening this cell it contamed only a 

 dead drone! Huber had described a similar mistake made 

 by some of his bees. At the base of this cell was an un- 

 usual quantity of the peculiar jelly fed to develop young 

 queens. One might almost imagine that the bees had dosed 

 the unfortunate drone to death ; as though they had hoped 

 by such liberal feeding to produce a change in his sexual 

 organization. 



137. In the Summer of 1854, we found another drone- 

 laying queen in our Apiaiy, with wings so shrivelled that 

 she could not fly. We gave her successively to several queen- 

 less colonies, in all of which she deposited only drone-eggs. 



138. In Italy there is a variety of the honey-bee differing- ■ 

 in size and color from the common kind. If a queen of this 

 variety is crossed with the common drones, her drone-prog- 

 eny will be Italian (551), and her worker-brood a cross 

 between the two; thus showing that the kind of drones she 

 will produce has no dependence on the male by which she 

 is fecundated. 



