Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/506

490 until the twenty-first day of her life, she not only lays nothing but drone-eggs, but her instincts are also impaired. Perfect, fertile queens always discriminate when laying; they deposit the drone and worker-eggs in their own peculiar cells, but the queens whose impregnation is retarded are indifferent, and lay their eggs anywhere. Previous to Huber's time, it was believed that the worker-bees, like worker-ants, carry away eggs thus misplaced, and deposit them in the proper cells; but he ascertained the fact that they carry away such eggs only to devour them. By some unknown means the bees can distinguish a worker from a drone egg; and, if, by an oversight, a worker-egg is allowed to develop into a larva in a drone-cell, or vice versa, the bees cap over the cell with the fiat or convex cover peculiar to its inmate, without reference to the size of the cell upon which they are working.

Réaumur, and most other naturalists, had believed that the queens deposit, in royal cells, a peculiar egg, which develops into a queen; but Schirach, a German clergyman, announced, toward the close of the last century, a discovery which created not a little interest. Some doubt still hung over this discovery, which was entirely dispelled by Huber's observations. Schirach stated that the bees can, by peculiar treatment, rear a queen from a worker-brood.

If a swarm of bees find itself suddenly queenless, the workers immediately select the larva of a common bee, not over three days old; they enlarge this cell by cutting down the partition-walls between it and two adjoining cells, destroying their inmates, and then they supply the remaining worm with food, differing in quality and quantity from that of the workers. The nursery of the royal heir is elongated, and finally capped over with a peculiar covering. In sixteen days after its exclusion from the egg this larva becomes a queen. From increase of space, accession of heat, and the different quality and quantity of food given to the worm, that which would have become a worker becomes a queen. By this change of treatment, its anatomy and physiology, its instincts and functions, the time necessary for its development, and the length of its life, are all utterly changed. The queen performs but one office in the hive, that of supplying her realm with subjects, while the workers perform all the multitudinous offices which the economy of the hive demands. The whole structure of the queen and workers is coördinated to their functions; she possesses the ovaries, which in the worker lie folded away in a germinal form, while they possess all the organs needed for their peculiar work—strong mandibles, powerful wings, pollen-basket, pincers, brush, wax-pockets, and honey-receptacle. Though queens are often made from worker-larvæ, Huber observed the old queen laying in royal cells, when the hive is about to throw off new swarms, and more than one queen will be required.

He also determined that some few workers, which have partaken