76 
THE BROOD. 
able, it does not liappen even in them. But if in the 
natural state, the space of eleven months be necessary 
for the male-eggs to acquire that degree of increment 
they must have attained when laid, how are we to 
explain the fact of two or three score of these male- 
eggs making their appearance before the Mother-bee 
is six weeks old ? Leaving this matter in the obscu- 
rity which we cannot dispel, we have only farther to 
observe, that in every case of retarded impregnation 
the instinct of the Queen appears to be greatly im- 
paired. She lays her eggs indiscriminately in drone 
and worker cells ; now and then even in royal cells ; 
and does not evince that jealousy and irritable temper- 
ament towards her rivals, which, in the natural state, 
characterize the Queen. 
Of the Brood . — In forty-six hours after impregna- 
tion, the Queen-bee, as already noticed, begins to lay 
the eggs of workers, and continues to do so without 
interruption throughout the season, at the rate of 
between 100 and 200 a day, unless cold weather in- 
tervene, when her operations are suspended, as well 
as the hatching retarded of the eggs already laid. 
The fruitfulness of the mother-bee is indeed aston- 
ishing. It has been computed that the numbers pro- 
duced in a hive by one Queen during the laying sea- 
son, amount to 100,000; and we are satisfied the 
computation is correct. In the beginning of the year 
it is a tolerably good stock hive which possesses a 
population of 2000 or 3000. Yet that same hive 
shall in June throw off swarms amounting to 40,000 
or 50,000 ; in many cases the first swarm itself, and 
