OR, MANUAI, OF THE APIARY. 119 



where one side is worker, the other drone. It is very probable 

 that these peculiarities arise from a. diseased condition of the 

 queen, or else from diseased spermatozoa. I have known one 

 queen, many of whose bees were thus abnormal. If a queen 

 is not impregnated for three or four weeks, she often com- 

 mences to lay without impregnation, and then is a " drone- 

 layer," and, of course, worthless. She may lay as regularly 

 as if impregnated, though this is not usual. She is, of course, 

 betrayed by the higher cappings, and exclusive drone-brood. 



The function of the queen is simply to lay eggs, and thus 

 keep the colony populous, and this she does with an energy 

 that is fairly startling. A good queen in her best estate will 

 lay two or three thousand eggs a day. I have seen a queen in 

 my observing hive lay for some time at the rate of four eggs 

 per minute, and have proved by actual computation of brood- 

 cells that a queen may lay over three thousand eggs in a day. 

 Both Langstroth and Berlepsch saw queens lay at the rate of 

 six eggs a minute. The latter had a queen that laid three 

 thousand and twenty-one eggs in twenty-four hours, by actual 

 count, and in twenty 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. As already stated, a queen 

 may lay nearly double her weight of eggs daily. Yet, with 

 even these figures as an advertisement, the queen-bee can not 

 boast of superlative fecundity, as the queen white-ant — an 

 insect closely related to the bees in habits, though not in struc- 

 ture, as the white-ants are lace-wings, and belong to the order 

 Neuroptera (Isoptera), which 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 no larger than the same in our common ants, has no 

 other amusement ; she can not walk ; she can not 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 



