84 Manual of the apiary. 



The latter had a queen that laid three thousand and twenty- 

 one eggs in 24 hours, by actual count, and in 20 days she 

 laid fifty-seven thousand. This queen continued prolific for 

 five years, and must have laid, says the Baron, at a low 

 estimate, more than 1,300,000 eggs. Dzierzon says queens 

 may lay 1,000,000 eggs, and I think these authors have not 

 exaggerated. Yet, with even these figures as an advertise- 

 ment, the queen bee cannot boast of superlative fecundity, 

 as the queen white-ant — an insect closely related to the bees 

 in habits, though not in structure, as the white-ants are lace- 

 wings and belong to the sub-order Neuroptera, whicji includes 

 our day-flies, dragon-flies, etc. — is known to lay over 80,000 

 •eggs daily. Yet this poor helpless thing, whose abdomen is 

 the size of a man's thumb, and composed almost wholly of 

 eggs, while the rest of her body is not larger than the same 

 in our common ants, has no other amusement ; she cannot 

 walk ; she cannot even feed herself or care for her eggs. 

 What wonder then that she should attempt big things in the 

 way of egg-laying ? She has nothing else to do, or to feel 

 proud of. 



Different queens vary as much in fecundity as do different 

 breeds of fowls. Some queens are so prolific that they fairly 

 demand hives of India rubber to accommodate them, keeping 

 their hives gushing with bees and profitable activity ; 

 Tvhile others are so inferior, that the colonies make a poor, 

 sickly effort to survive at all, and usually succumb early, 

 before those adverse circumstances which are ever waiting to 

 •confront all life on the globe. The activity of the queen, itoo, 

 is governed largely by the activity of the workers. The 

 queen will either lay sparingly, or stop altogether, in the 

 interims of storing honey, while, on the other hand, she is 

 stimulated to lay to her utmost capacity, when all is life and 

 activity in the hive. 



. It would seem that the queen either reasons from conditions, 

 is taught by instinct, or else that without her volition the 

 general activity of the worker-bees stimulates the ovaries, how, 

 we know not, to grow more eggs. We know that such a 

 stimulus is born of desire, in case of the high-holder, already 

 referred to. That the queen may have control of the activity 

 of her ovaries, either directly or indirectly, through reflex 



