CONTROLLED MATING IN HONEYBEES 



379 



tive organs are so dwarfed and imperfect 

 that they cannot mate with a drone, and 

 drones are never seen to badger worker- 

 bees. Under certain conditions the 

 ovaries of some workers may be developed 

 sufficiently to enable them to lay eggs 

 which will hatch and mature, but like 

 those of a virgin queen, their eggs can 

 produce only drones. 



THE QUEENBEE CONTROLS THE SEX OF HER 



OFFSPRING 



Voluntary control of the sex of the 

 offspring is a unique gift of Nature, 

 which is enjoyed by the queenbee. This 

 ability is possessed by extremely few, if 

 indeed by any other, insects, and probably 

 for sound reasons it has never been 

 entrusted to the hands of Man. We lack 

 definite information as to how the queen 

 controls the fertilization of her eggs. 

 The feat of laying two thousand eggs a 

 day, as she sometimes does, and of 

 properly distributing them with almost 

 unerring precision, the fertilized ones in 

 worker-cells, and the unfertilized ones in 

 the larger drone-cells, places a tremendous 

 burden of presumption upon the discrim- 

 ination of the queen. 



If the fertilization of the eggs were to 

 occur in a hit-and-miss fashion as they 

 descend the oviduct and pass the sperma- 

 theca, then we should expect to see the 

 queen oscillating back and forth more or 

 less at random between the worker-comb 

 and the drone-comb to enable her to place 

 the eggs properly. This does not occur, 

 and our difficulty in attempting to dis- 

 credit the "will" of the queen in con- 

 trolling the fertilization of her eggs is 

 further sharpened by the classical observa- 

 tion that a normal queen lays eggs appro- 

 priate to the kind of comb she is on. 

 Thus, she never seems to be obliged to 

 leave a worker-comb for instance, and go 

 over to a drone-comb so that she can 



dispose of an unfertilized egg or two 

 before she can proceed with the laying of 

 more fertilized eggs. The burden of 

 precision would seem not to rest in some 

 faculty of the queen by which she knows 

 whether the next to be laid will be a 

 fertilized egg or an unfertilized one; 

 nor can it rest in any mechanics of the 

 cell, as if its shape or size or depth were 

 determining factors, for prolific queens 

 sometimes follow upon the heels of the 

 comb-builders so closely that eggs are 

 deposited when the cells are only a third 

 completed. Furthermore, when in the 

 economy of the hive drones are desired, 

 and no drone-comb is available, she does 

 not hesitate to deposit unfertilized eggs 

 in worker-comb. Rather does the burden 

 of precision appear to rest in a voluntary 

 control of the mechanism of the sperma- 

 thecal duct which parcels out fertilizing 

 material to some eggs as they pass, and 

 not to others, depending upon the season, 

 the condition of the colony, and the 

 hereditary complex of the queen. Stu- 

 dents of insect psychology are reluctant to 

 concede voluntary acts to insects, and the 

 concession is allowed in this case only as. 

 a makeshift till further investigations; 

 shall bring forth a more satisfactory- 

 explanation. 



It has been supposed that a mated queen 

 could continue to lay fertilized or unfer- 

 tilized eggs at will just as long as there 

 were any sperms left in the spermatheca, 

 but this is not strictly the case. Long 

 before the supply of sperms has been 

 completely exhausted most queens begin 

 to deposit a larger and larger proportion 

 of unfertilized eggs, and as a classical 

 symptom of approaching sterility or 

 decrepitude in the queen these unfertilized 

 eggs are scattered about in worker-cells. 



In the phraseology of human psychol- 

 ogy, therefore, the situation might be 

 stated about as follows: she willed to lay 





