THE QUEEN BEE. 47 



blushing bride returns to her home in the earliest stage of mater- 

 nity — not like. the completion of other weddings, where the bride 

 returns to her home on the arm of her lord, but the queen bee 

 returns alone, leaving her lord not even to follow her. He, poor 

 fellow, dies on the battlefield of love — not killed by his disappointed 

 rivals, but dies as Nature has willed it. I have said elsewhere 

 that all bees are posthumous. No drone that is in the hive, or 

 that is on the wing, has ever been a father. He may become one, 

 but he must pay the penalty his father had to pay before him. 



The mother bee returns to the hive a fecundated — a complete 

 female bee, now capable of becoming a mother. Indeed, had she 

 never met with a consort she would nevertheless become a mother, 

 but only to lay eggs that would produce males, and males only. 



The fecundation of a queen bee. — With nearly all other 

 ■oviparous animals, it is the ovule that is fecundated; but with 

 bees it is the animal herself, and she fecundates the egg according 

 to requirements, and, to a certain extent, regulates their sexuality. 

 The number of eggs the queen bee lays in the cells is in accordance 

 to the strength of the colony. She will not lay more in the cells 

 than there are inmates to cover them. Ofttimes a queen will be so 

 prolific she will lay her eggs, although there are not sufficient bees 

 in the hive to cover them. These supernumerary eggs are wasted. 

 This should be an incentive to bee men to keep strong colonies. 

 Langstroth says: "It is most amusing to see how the supernu- 

 merary eggs of the queen are disposed of. If the workers are 

 too few to take charge of all her eggs, or there is a deficiency of 

 bee-bread to nourish the young, or if, for any reason, she does 

 not judge best to deposit them in the cells, she stands upon a comb 

 and simply extrudes them from her oviduct, the workers devouring 

 them as fast as they are laid. I have frequently witnessed, in 

 observing hives, the sagacity of the queen in thus economising her 

 necessary work, instead of depositing her eggs in the cells where 

 they are not wanted." 



On her return to the hive after her marital flight she is 

 received by the workers, although not her own children, with all 

 the signs of love and affection that children can bestow upon a 

 parent. You must know there is nothing regal about the queen 

 bee; although she is called such, she is only the mother bee. 

 Before she went out the workers treated her as one of them- 

 selves, excepting that the nurse bees occasionally fed her. Now 

 nothing is too good for her. Her every want is attended to with 

 lavish kindness She is about to become a mother. Yet what a 



