24 BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



duty. Curiosity has prompted me to scrutinize Ma 

 matter pretty closely, but I have failed to discovei 

 that she performs any other office in the colony ex- 

 cept the one just indicated. I never could observe 

 that she had any care for her offspring, either feed- 

 ing them or manifesting any parental anxiety what- 

 ever for their welfare ; in fact, the workers, as a gen- 

 eral thing, supply her ladyship with her food, from 

 time to time, as she requires it. 



Mr. Quinby, in referring to the duties of the 

 queen, says, ki the queen is the mother of the entire 

 family ; her duty appears to be only to deposit eggs 

 in the cells. I am also led to believe that the time 

 for the queen to lay eggs, and the requisite quantity, 

 is in a measure indicated by the workers — the kind 

 of food which they give her, or the quantity of it, as 

 the case may be. This, I feel quite sure, promotes 

 the rapid production and depositing of eggs in the 

 one case, and in the reverse of that a diminution, 

 even to the entire cessation thereof." I have already 

 noticed that the workers have the faculty or power 

 of rearing a queen from an egg laid in a worker cell, 

 by giving them a liberal supply of food of a peculiar 

 kind, the effect of which seems to be the full devel- 

 opment of the sex, which, if permitted to have re- 

 mained in the worker cell, and been fed on the com- 

 mon or ordinary food, it had been a worker, or a 

 partially developed female. Here we see the pow- 

 erful effects of stimulating food, for such it doubtless 

 is. Would it be unreasonable to suppose that food 

 of a similar kind, given to the perfect queen, would 



