214 BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



wax glands; that the eyes of the queen are smaller 

 and less prominent than the worker's, and her an- 

 tennae inferior, both in size and organisation. Her 

 legs, though stronger, are less perfect, having neither 

 pollen baskets nor pollen brushes ; while the webbed 

 hairs of the worker's thorax — effective instruments 

 in food collection — she does not possess ; her wings 

 are less developed, and her sting likely to be ren- 

 dered useless by atrophy and inspissation of venom ; 

 her digestive system is less complete, and her gland 

 structures relatively defective, or wanting. Under 

 the social instinct, she, like the drone, has been 

 developed in one direction only ; but here her facul- 

 ties are more extraordinary than any to be found 

 outside the order Hymenoptera. 



If her abdomen be cut open down the sides by fine 

 scissors, and the first three ventral plates and the 

 chyle stomach removed, we discover two very large 

 organs (O, O, Fig. 42), filling nearly the whole of the 

 inclosed space, which corresponds exactly to that 

 occupied by the testes in the drone. These are the 

 ovaries, and consist each of from 100 to 150 blind 

 tubes, lying side by side, and gathered into two con- 

 sistent, conoid bundles, by countless small tracheae, 

 which act as connective tissue. The ovarian tubes 

 are, at the upper end, very small, and here each egg 

 is represented by an initial cell (the germ cell), which 

 passes on during its development, receiving first its 

 vitellus, or yolk, and finally being coated by the 

 chorion, or outer skin (B and C, Fig. 46). It then con- 

 tinues moving downwards, as room is made for it by 

 the escape of the mature eggs at the lower, wider end. 



