REE-KEEPERS MANUAL. 17 



RETARDED IMPREGNATION. 



Huber also states, that when a queen is retarded 

 twenty-one days from her birth in her impregnation, she 

 then, and ever thereafter, lays drone eggs only. 



As no one has ever experimented on queens in the 

 manner of the above two cases, — at least, no one having 

 yet given publicity to any observation, refuting or cor- 

 roborating Huber's discovery, it is not easy to say, 

 whether the last case be true or false. 



In regard to the sterility of queens that have not been 

 allowed to leave their hives, there is no doubt. Their 

 impregnation being effected on the wing, it follows, of 

 course, that confinement with, or without males, must 

 render them barren. 



That retarded impregnation does cause queens to lay 

 drone eggs, is quite possible,'yet the fact might not come 

 under the observation of an ordinary bee-keeper in a 

 century, in most cases, since nature has so amply pro- 

 vided for the effectual impregnation of queens, that to 

 be retarded by any natural event, is out of the question, 

 except in cases of the death of a queen, at a period 

 when the drones are exterminated, or so few of them 

 existing as to jeopardize the impregnation of the suc- 

 cessor to royalty. 



I, myself, have had a case in which drones only were 

 produced, but whether it was owing to a retarded im- 

 pregnation of the queen, or whether it was the produc- 

 tion of fertile workers, I am unable to say positively, 



