RAISING AND INTRODUCTION OF QUEENS. 355 
Africans would appear to have the pre-eminence ; and, 
unfortunately, their workers visit other stocks to such 
an extent, that these pests are exceedingly likely to 
put themselves in evidence at any part of the apiary 
during any temporary queenlessness. A Ligurian 
colony in the Rottingdean apiary, that had been 
deprived of its mother two days previously, was 
found to contain quite a number of South 
Africans, the progeny of the queen referred to on page 
346. One of these workers was receiving court in a 
ring of attendants. As she was lifted from the comb, 
five workers refused to leave, gathering on my fingers^ 
caressing her, and offering food. These followed to 
the operating-room, and continued to fondle the 
detached thorax precisely as in the case of a true 
fertile mother. Her ovaries were finely developed, even 
more so than those represented at C, Fig. 42, Vol. I., 
possessing about fifty ovarian tubes each, and carrying 
eggs in every condition. It was, to me, most ex- 
tremely interesting to note that the stomach was 
absolutely free of pollen, containing only the semi- 
transparent fluid so distinctive of the queen, and thus 
affording the completion of the evidence of the truth 
of the theory respecting queen-feeding I advanced 
at page 83, Vol. I. In another queenless stock, 
visited the same afternoon, a South African worker 
was seen in the very act of ovipositing. She was 
seized with her abdomen still inserted in the cell, and 
dissection immediately revealed a pair of ovaries about 
one-fifth the size of those of a true mother. 
A queenless nucleus of Carniolans, standing next 
the South African stock, furnished a third fertile 
2 A 2 
