74 



PHTSIOLOGT OF THE HONEY-BEE. 



reoognized by the small size of the pollen pellets she 

 carries, when compared with those of older bees, and bj' 

 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 disorderly and restless motions of robber-bees. 

 (664.) 



175. Although the workers are of the same sex as the 

 queens (4), their sexual organs are undeveloped, owing to 

 the coarser food which they receive during the latter part of 

 their growth in the cell (108). Yet they have rudimental 

 ovaries, containing a few undeveloped eggs (fig. 30). They 

 are incapable of fecundation. 



176. Occasionally, some of them appear to be sufficient- 

 ly developed to be capable of laying eggs ; but these eggs, 

 like those of queens whose impregnation has been retarded, 

 always produce drones. Drone-laying, by worker-bees, 

 only takes place when a colony which has lost its queen 

 despairs "of obtaining another, and seems to be caused by 

 their eagerness to raise brood. Huber thought that fertile 

 workers were reared in the neighborhood of the young 

 queens, and that they received some particles of the pecu- 

 liar food or jelly on which these queens are fed.* But 

 microscopic examinations seem to prove that a large num- 

 ber of the workers, raised during a good honey harvest, 

 are capable of laying eggs. The number of drone-laying 



*An extract from Huber* s preface wiU be interesting in this connection . After 

 speaking of his blindness, and praising the extraordinary taste for Natural His- 

 tory, of his assistant, Buroens, ' 'who was born 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 Is impossible to form a just idea of the 

 patience and skill with which Burnens has carried out the experiments which 

 I am about 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 cou it3d fatigue and pain as nothing, com- 

 pared with the great desire he felt to know the results . ' ' 



