STRANGE FACTS ABOUT QUEENS 89 



The outstanding feature of her offspring is, 

 however, that they are all drones. The explana- 

 tion of this strange circumstance is said to be, 

 for there is no absolute certainty on the point, 

 although the probabilities are all in favour of the 

 theory, that these fertile workers are bees which 

 have been reared in close contiguity to a queen- 

 cell, and have thus received a certain share of 

 the special queen food after they have been 

 weaned. 



As long as there is a fertile queen in the hive, 

 either the laying worker's functions as an egg- 

 layer remain dormant, or the bees decline to 

 permit her to exercise them, but if the queen 

 disappears, the bees make the best shift they can 

 with her progeny. She lacks the method and 

 order of the queen in the disposition of her eggs. 

 A queen goes regularly down the rows, so that 

 the time of her presence at particular parts of 

 the comb can be noted by the age of the brood 

 there, but the worker puts her eggs here and 

 there in a scattered fashion. 



Now these eggs are produced by a virgin, and 

 it is one of the things that mankind always 

 considers astonishing, that one sex alone should 

 be able to reproduce itself. I suppose the 

 truth is, we are accustomed to judge everything 

 by our own standard, and, looking upon such a 

 thing as impossible among ourselves, we do not 

 appreciate that it may possibly be so among other 



