1982] Alloway, Buschinger, Talbot, Stuart & Thomas 
255 
will employ a set of terms developed by Buschinger (1968) to de- 
scribe these individuals. These terms are defined as follows: 
A-queen: An inseminated, fully fertile queen. The ovaries are as 
long, or nearly as long, as the whole body. The ovarioles con- 
tain many developing oocytes; and conspicuous corpora lutea 
are present. The spermatheca is full of sperm. Such queens are 
normally more than a year old. 
b-queen: An inseminated young queen. At the time of our study (in 
mid-summer), the ovaries were about half their eventual length 
and contained developing oocytes. Sometimes a small corpus 
luteum was visible in the base of one or two ovarioles. The 
spermatheca was full. We believe that these females had mated 
the previous summer and were in the process of becoming fully 
fertile. After mating, newly inseminated queens have very short 
ovarioles with no developing oocytes. If a nest, before the mat- 
ing season, contains one or more A-queens and one or more 
b-queens with growing oocytes, we conclude that that nest 
represents all or part of a colony which adopted one or more 
newly mated queens the previous summer. 
Table 4. Number and Percent of Queenright and Queenless Nests of L. ambiguus, 
L. curvispinosus and L. longispinosus Collected in the Spring of 1979 which 
Produced Broods of Various Compositions when Cultured in the Laboratory 
Queenright Nests 
Species 
9 and/or 
5 only 
9 and/or 
5 and $ 
S only 
Total 
L. ambiguus 
L. curvispinosus 
L. longispinosus 
Total 
68 (47.5%) 
95 (65.5%) 
42 (56.0%) 
205 (56.5%) 
60 (42.0%) 
49 (33.8%) 
22 (29.3%) 
131 (36.1%) 
15 (10.5%) 
1 ( 0.7%) 
11 (14.7%) 
27 ( 7.4%) 
143 (100.0%) 
145 (100.0%) 
75 (100.0%) 
363 (100.0%) 
Queenless Nests 
Species 
9 and/or 
$ only 
9 and/or 
5 and $ 
S only 
Total 
L. ambiguus 
L. curvispinosus 
L. longispinosus 
Total 
37 (52.1%) 
35 (43.2%) 
12(38.7%) 
84 (45.9%) 
24 (33.8%) 
38 (46.9%) 
12(38.7%) 
74 (40.4%) 
10 (14.1%) 
8 ( 9.9%) 
7 (22.6%) 
25 (13.7%) 
71 (100.0%) 
81 (100.0%) 
31 (100.0%) 
183 (100.0%) 
