THE QUEEN. 57 
his report: ‘The ovaries were filled with eggs, the poison- 
sac full of fluid; and the spermatheca distended with a per- 
fectly colorless, transparent, viscid liquid, without a trace of 
spermatozoids.’’ 
136. On examining this same colony a few days later, 
we found satisfactory evidence that these drone-eggs were 
laid by the queen which had been removed. No fresh eggs 
had been deposited in the cells, and the bees on missing her 
had begun to build royal cells, to rear, if possible, another 
queen. ‘Two of the royal cells were in a short time discon- 
tinued; while a third was sealed over in the usual way, to 
undergo its changes to a perfect queen. As the bees had 
only a drone-laying queen, whence came the female egg 
from which they were rearing a queen? 
At first we imagined that they might have stolen it from 
another hive; but on opening this cell. it contained only a 
dead drone! Huber had described a similar mistake made 
by some of his bees. At the base of this cell was an unus- 
ual quantity of the peculiar jelly fed to develop young 
queens. One might almost imagine that the bees had dosed 
the unfortunate drone to death; as though they had hoped 
by such liberal feeding to produce a change in his sexual 
organization. 
137. In the Summer of 1854, we found another drone- 
laying queen in our Apiary, with wings so shrivelled that 
she could not fly. We gave her successively to several queen- 
less colonies, in all of which she deposited only drone-eggs. 
138. In Italy there is a variety of the honey-bee differing 
in size and color from the common kind. Ifa queen of this 
variety is crossed with the common drones, her drone-prog- 
eny will be Italian (651), and her worker-brood a cross 
between the two; thus showing that the kind of drones she 
will produce has no dependence on the male by which she 
is fecundated. 
