78 Fecundity of Queen. 



amusement ; she cannot walk ; she cannot even feed herself, 

 or care for her eggs. What wonder then that she should 

 attempt big things in the way of egg-laying? She has nothing 

 else to do, or to feel proud of. 



Different queens vary as much in fecundity as do different 

 breeds of fowls. Some queens are so prolific that they fairly de- 

 maud hives of India, rubber to accommodate them, keeping their 

 hives gushing with bees and profitable activity ; while others 

 are so inferior that the colonies make a poor, sickly effort to 

 survive at all, and usually succumb early, before those ad- 

 verse circumstances which are ever waiting to confront all 

 life on the globe. The activity of the queen is governed 

 largely by the activity of the workers. The queen will either 

 lay spayiiigly, or stop altogether, in the interims of storing 

 honey, while, on the other hand, she is stimulated to lay to 

 her utmost capacity when all is life and activity in the hive. 

 This refusal to lay when nectar is wanting does not hold true, 

 apparently, with the Cyprian and the Syrian bees. 



It would seem that the queen either reasons from conditions, 

 is taught by instinct, or else that without her volition the 

 general activity of the worker-bees stimulates the ovaries, how 

 we know not, to grow more eggs. We know that such a 

 stimulus is born of desire, in case of the high-holder already 

 referred to. That the queen may have control of the activity 

 of her ovaries, either directly or indirectly, through reflex 

 nervous action induced by the general excitement of the bees, 

 which always foUows active storing, is not only possible but is 

 quite likely. 



The old poetical notion that the queen is the revered and 

 admired sovereign of the colony, whose pathway is ever lined 

 by obsequious courtiers, whose person is ever the recipient of 

 loving caresses, and whose will is law in this bee-hive king- 

 dom, controlling all the activities inside the hive and leading 

 the colony whithersoever it may go, is unquestionably mere 

 fiction. In the hive, as in the world, individuals are valued 

 for what they are worth. The queen, as the most important 

 individual, is regarded with solicitude, and her removal or loss 

 is noted with consternation, as the welfare of the colony is 

 threatened ; yet, let the queen become useless, and she is 

 despatched with the same absence of emotion that charac- 

 terizes the destruction of the drones when they have become 



