Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Bees.djvu/79

Rh which will, probably, for ever remain inscrutable to man." In the natural state of things, that is, when fecundation has not been postponed, the Queen lays the eggs of workers in forty-six hours after her union with the male, and continues for the subsequent eleven months to produce these alone, and it is only after this period that a considerable laying of the eggs of drones commences. These male eggs require eleven months to attain to maturity, but, under the effects of retardation, they are matured in forty-six hours. The eggs of workers, which, in the usual state of things, would have been laid first, never come to light; their vitality has been destroyed by some vitiation which has taken place, and the cause of which has not yet been discovered. Huber, in reasoning on the subject, and contemplating the difficulty attending it, declares it to be "an abyss in which he is lost." There is another circumstance which he has not adverted to, and which seems to increase these difficulties. He asserts that before a Queen commences her great laying of male-eggs, she must be eleven months old. But he acknowledges that "a Queen, hatched in spring, will perhaps lay fifty or sixty eggs of drones in whole, during the course of the ensuing summer." We know this to be true from our own experience; and also as the usual consequence of this appearance of male-eggs, that the Bees commence building royal cells,—the Queen lays in them, and swarming takes place. Now this partial laying of drone-eggs takes place only in the case of very early swarms; and if the weather be