74 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HONEY-BEE, 
recognized by the small size of the pollen pellets she 
carries, when compared with those of older bees, and by 
the turns she makes before alighting, 
174. The Apiarist should become acquainted with the 
behavior of young bees, so as not to mistake their pleasant 
flight for the restless motions of robber-bees. (664. ) 
1765. Although the workers are females, they are inca- 
pable of fecundation (108). Yet the rudimental ovaries 
of some of them contain a few undeveloped eggs (fig. 30). 
176. Occasionally some of them are sufficiently developed 
to be capable of laying eggs; but these eggs always produce 
drones. Laying workers appear only when a colony has been 
queenless for some time. Huber thought that fertile workers 
were reared in the neighborhood of the young queens, and 
that they received some of the peculiar food, or jelly on 
which these queens are fed.* But itis more probable that 
itis the increase of the milky food, given lavishly to the 
larvie in the first stage of their development, during a good 
honey flow, which enlarged their ovaries (108), and that 
the young bers, thus raised, having no more larvee to nurse 
when the hive has suddenly become queen-less, feed each 
other with their milky food, which excites their laying, as 
it does for the queens (39). The number of drone-laying 
*An extract from Huber’s preface will be intcresting in this connection. After 
speaking of his blindness, and praising the extraordinary taste for Natural His- 
tory, of his assistant, Burnoens, ‘‘who was boro with the talents of an obser- 
ver, ’’ he says: ‘‘ Every one of the facts I now publish, we have seen, over 
and over again, during the period of eight years, which we have employed in 
making our observations on bees. It isimpossible to form a just idea of the 
patience and skill with which Burnens has carried out the experiments which 
Iam abont to describe; he has often watched some of the working-bees of our 
hives, which we had reason to think fertile, for the space of twenty-four hours, 
without distraction * * * * and he counted fatigue and pain as nothing, com- 
pared with the great desire he felt to know the results.’’ 
