NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HONEY-BEE. 
5ft 
regarded as neither males nor females, they were called 
Neuters ; hut careful microscopic examinations, by detect¬ 
ing the rudiments of their ovaries, have determined their 
sex. The accuracy of these examinations lias been verified 
by the well known facts respecting fertile workers. 
Itiem, a German Apiarian, first discovered that workers 
sometimes lay eggs. Huber subsequently ascertained that 
such workers were bred in hives that had lost their queen, 
and near the royal cells in which young queens were being 
reared. He conjectured that small portions of the peculiar 
food of these infant queens were accidentally dropped 
into their cells, by eating which their reproductive organs 
were more developed than those of other workers. 
In the Summer of 1854,1 examined a brood-comb which 
had been given to a queenless colony. It contained eleven 
sealed queens; and numbers of the cells were capped with 
a round covering, as though they contained drones. 
Being opened, some contained drone, and others worker- 
nymphs. The latter seemed of a little more sugar-loaf 
shape than the common workers, and their cocoons were 
of a coarser texture than usual. I had previously noticed 
the same kind of cells in hives raising artificial queens, but 
thought they all contained drones. It is a well known 
fact, that bees often begin more queen-cells than they 
choose to finish. It seems to me probable, therefore, that 
when rearing queens artificially, they frequently give a 
portion of the royal jelly to larvae, which, for some reason, 
they do not develope as full grown queens; and that such 
larvae become fertile workers. Huber states that those 
fertile workers which lay only drone-eggs, prefer large 
cells in which to deposit them, resorting to small ones, 
only when unable to find those of greater diameter. A 
hive in my Apiary having much worker-comb, but only a 
small piece of drone size, a fertile worker filled the latter 
