The Life of the Bee 
follows, therefore, that the queen must 
possess the power, while laying, of know- 
ing or determining the sex of the egg, 
and of adapting it to the cell over which 
she is bending. She will rarely make a 
mistake. How does she contrive, from 
among the myriad eggs her ovaries con- 
tain, to separate male from female, and 
lower them, at will, into the unique 
oviduct ? 
Here, yet again, there confronts us an 
enigma of the hive; and in this case one 
of the most unfathomable. We know 
that the virgin queen is not sterile; but 
the eggs that she lays will produce only 
males. It is not till after the impregnation 
of the nuptial flight that she can produce 
workers or drones at will. The nuptial 
flight places her permanently in posses- 
sion, till death, of the spermatozoa torn 
from her unfortunate lover. These sper- 
matozoa, whose number Dr. Leuckart 
223 
