66 BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



queen, (which would be true in a certain sense,) with- 

 out even suspecting the abortive attempts to fill her 

 place by a fertile worker. 



The existence of fertile workers has long been 

 known to eminent writers, and this fact is brought 

 forward to prove conclusively that the common 

 workers are females. Bevan says : That the working 

 bees are females, is clear, from the circumstance of 

 their being known to lay eggs ; this fact was first 

 noticed by Riem, and was afterward confirmed by 

 Huber, whose assistant on one occasion seized a fer- 

 tile worker in the very act of laying. 



It is a remarkable fact that these fertile workers 

 never lay any but drone eggs. This uninterrupted 

 laying of drone eggs was noticed by the Lusatian 

 observers, as well as by those of the Palatinate. 

 Bonnet, on referring to this fact, supposes there must 

 have been small queens mixed with the woi-kers 

 upon which the experiments were made, whose office 

 it was to lay male eggs in all hives. Fertile workers 

 appear smaller in the belly and more slender in the 

 body than sterile workers, and this is the only exter- 

 nal difference between them, says Bevan. 



If any further proof to establish the fact of work- 

 ers being fertile is needed, we have it in the dissec- 

 tions of Miss Jurine, daughter of a distinguished 

 naturalist of Geneva. By adopting a peculiar meth- 

 od of preparing the subject, she brought into view 

 the rudiments of the ovaria of the common worker 

 bee ; her examination was repeated several times, 

 always with the same results. 



