120 The Honey-Makers 



tion, there is no doubt that the queen owes her reputation 

 for royalty to the pecuUar conduct of the bees about her 

 and yet she is in no sense a ruler. She does not issue 

 commands nor examine the work done with a view either 

 to criticise or to advise, nor does she indulge in royal 

 idleness. 



On the contrary, no bee in the hive performs so stupen- 

 dous a task as she. 



There may be over a hundred thousand bees hatched 

 in one season, and of all these she alone is the mother. 



A good queen will sometimes lay three thousand five 

 hundred eggs a day, or nearly double the weight of her 

 own body, and continue doing it for several weeks in 

 succession. 



What enables her to perform this apparent miracle ? 



Two things, — • her advantageous physical start in life, 

 for she is the best nourished of all the bees, and the great 

 care she receives from the workers. 



She is in reality from the time she begins her maternal 

 task little more than an egg-laying machine. 



As she has no responsibility of finding nectar or build- 

 ing waxen cells, or even of caring for her own wants, she 

 has no use for the highly developed nervous organization 

 that distinguishes the worker bees, and we find this mother 

 of the hive possessed of a small head, a small brain, and a 

 simple understanding. Her antennae contain but two-thirds 

 as many sense organs as those of the workers, and her com- 

 pound eyes have each somewhat less than five thousand 

 facets, while the workers' contain over six thousand. 



Her digestive power is so imperfect that the worker bees 

 are obliged to eat and digest the pollen for her, secreting 

 a rich nutritious fluid which the queen obtains by putting 

 her short tongue into the open months of the workers. 



Fed thus upon extremely nutritions and already digested 



