lo THE BEE AS AN INSECT. [Ch. I. 



the species being the purpose of her existence; and she 

 follows it up with an assiduity similar to that with which 

 the workers construct combs or collect honey. A queen 

 will lay in the breeding season from i,ooo to 3,000 eggs 

 a day. Both Langstroth and Von Berlepsch have seen 

 queens lay at the rate of six per minute, or more ; and the 

 latter observer, on supplying his queen with some new 

 empty comb, found at the end of twenty-four hours that 

 she had laid 3,021 eggs, which at her observed speed 

 she would accomplish in eight hours, and thus have six- 

 teen for rest. She kept up to nearly this rate for twenty 

 days, in which she filled 57,000 cells; and, what is still 

 more surprising, she went on in like style ior five years, 

 during which, at the lowest reckoning, she laid. 1,300,000 

 eggs, or 300,000 per year. But with ordinary queens, 

 says the Baron, 1,200 a day is excellently good work, and 

 this rate from February to September, with allowance for 

 slacker periods, will produce more than 150,000 bees in 

 a year. " Most queens," says Dzierzon, " in spacious 

 hives and at a favourable season, lay 60,000 in a month, 

 . . . and a specially fertile queen, in the four years 

 which she on an average lives, lays over a million eggs." 

 This is indeed a- vast number; but when there is taken 

 into consideration the multitudes required for swarms, 

 the constant lessening of their strength by death in 

 various ways, and the many casualties attending them in 

 their distant travels in search of the luscious store, it 

 does not seem that the case is overstated. 



