454 
[March 
p. 279, note*) distinctly states that some working-bees “differing in 
shape from the rest, are occasionally fertile, depositing eggs but which 
only produce males.” And according to Kirby and Spence {Introd. 
Letter 19), “ Kiem of Lauten of the Palatinate Apiarian /S^oc^e^y, and 
Wilhelmi of the Lusatian affirm that the queen lays the eggs which 
produce the queens and workers and the workers those that produce the 
drones or males ”; which is valuable as the testimony of practical bee- 
masters to the fact of the workers occasionally, at all events, producing 
male offspring. Again, we know from Huber, that if the coitus of 
the queen-bee is delayed till the 21st day after her birth, which may 
be considered as an ineffectual coitus or no coitus at all, she ever there¬ 
after gives birth to nothing but % eggs; (St. Farg. H^menopt. I, p. 
324) and it is well known that every queen-bee normally impregnated 
produces 9 , or which is the same thing, 9 eggs for 10 or 11 months, 
and finally, when the effect of the impregnation may be supposed to have 
died out, % eggs. (St. Fargeau Hymen. I, p. 324.) Furthermore, we 
learn through Huber, on the authority of M. Perrot, that in the wasps 
there are “ small 9 $ '^^ot bigger than the workers which lay only % 
eggs.” (Quoted Kirby and Spence, Introd. Letter 18, p. 108=p.348.) 
x\nd Kirby and Spence state generally that “ like those of the wasps 
and hive-bees the minor queens [of Bombus] produce only male eggs, 
which come out in time to fertilize the young females that found the 
vernal colonies” (^ibid. p. 353); i. e. come out in the autumn, when 
those “young females” are well known to make their first appearance, 
and when only, as I know by long observation, the % % either of Po- 
listes, Vespa or Bombus are to be met with. Whether in the case of 
the wasps and the humble bees we choose to call these individuals 
that lay only % eggs “minor queens” or “small females” or “workers,” is 
a matter of taste; for there is in these two groups no external charac¬ 
ter but size, or occasionally trifling differences in coloration, to distin¬ 
guish them from the large 9 9 that found the colonies in the spring. 
But in the case of the hive-bee, where there are marked structural 
characters that separate the worker from the female or queen-bee, it 
was most satisfactorily demonstrated by Huber, that the individuals 
that laid the % eggs had all the structural characters of workers; 
(quoted St. Farg. Hymen. I, p. 356—8 ;) and here therefore it would 
be manifestly incorrect to call these individuals “ small queens.” The 
