346 
BRITISH BEES. 
is already making her progresses from one side of each 
comb to the other, and depositing her eggs as rapidly as 
she can, and is constantly attended by her aides-de-camp, 
as I have suggested, which act, as they evidently some¬ 
times are, as the emissaries of her commands. They 
consist of ten or twelve or sometimes more, and have 
been previously described. They are replaced by others 
as they quit to obey orders, or as they retire fatigued, 
so that she is always surrounded. The number of eggs 
she will lay in a day is about two hundred. In doing 
this she first thrusts her head into a cell to ascertain its 
fitness, which having done, she withdraws it, and then 
curving her body she thrusts the apex of her abdomen, 
which tapers to the extremity for the purpose, into the 
cell, wherein by means of the sheaths of her curved sting, 
which act as an ovipositor, she places the egg at the 
bottom of the cell. It is possibly from some taction of 
this instrument that she discerns the sizes of the eggs, 
and thence their respective sex. This process she con¬ 
tinues repeating, passing from one side of the comb to 
the other by means of the passages perforated through 
it, making the numbers as nearly as possible tally on each 
side and as opposite to each other as may be, and she 
will then go forward to further cakes of comb. In this 
way she lays about ten or twelve thousand in six weeks, 
depending much upon the propitiousness of the season, 
but the rapidity of this laying intermits according to the 
months; the above estimate is based upon what April 
and May produce, as it slackens during the summer 
heats and again revives in the autumn, but totally ter¬ 
minates with the first cold weather. She thus will lay 
from thirty to forty thousand or more in a year. 
Apiarians do not state whether the san.e queen heads 
