io 4 EVOLUTION APPLIED TO BEES 



bees that, although the queen is so prolific, her 

 progeny to all intents and purposes do not increase 

 the number of bees available to form a new genera- 

 tion. The fly which lays a hundred eggs in its 

 life produces by compound multiplication far 

 more descendants than the queen laying two 

 thousand eggs a day. 



I confess I find this a hard nut to crack. Every- 

 thing in the life of the bee would seem to have 

 been evolved on the most difficult lines, and we 

 can only say that had it been the design to produce 

 a highly specialised creature under the most 

 impossible conditions, and in spite of the most 

 adverse circumstances, no better line of evolution 

 could :have been chosen. 



There are certain sub-issues which only seem 

 to make the problem more difficult of solution. 

 For instance, it is pretty generally believed that 

 the sting of the bee is a modified ovipositor which, 

 in the ancestral form, served the same end as it 

 does at the present day with the ichneumons. If 

 we grant that in the worker bee the disuse of the 

 weapon for its original purpose was accompanied 

 by a specialised evolution into a weapon of defence, 

 we seem to be on fairly level ground. But what 

 then becomes of the queen who has a sting as 

 well as an instrument for egg laying ? Presum- 

 ably the queen has always laid eggs. How then 

 did she develop a separate sting ? 



These problems stagger me when I come to 



