ather grows cold. Lastly, it follows, that although
cold will retard the laying of a queen impregnated in autumn, she will
begin to lay in spring without requiring new copulation.

It may be added, that the fecundity of the queen, whose history is given
here, was astonishing. On the first of May, we found in her hive,
besides six hundred males, already flies, two thousand four hundred and
thirty-eight cells, containing either eggs or nymphs of drones. Thus,
she had laid more than three thousand male eggs during March and April,
which is above fifty each day. Her death soon afterwards unfortunately
interrupted my observation, I intended to calculate the total number of
male eggs that she should lay throughout the year, and compare it with
those of queens whose fecundation had not been retarded. You know, Sir,
that the latter lay about two thousand male eggs in spring; and another
laying, but less considerable, commences in August, also in the
interval, that they produce the eggs of workers almost solely. But it is
otherwise with the females whose copulation has been retarded: they
produce no workers' eggs. For four or five months following, they lay
the eggs of males without interruption, and in such numbers, that, in
this short time, I suppose one queen gives birth to more drones than a
female, whose fecundation has not been retarded, produces in the course
of two years. It gives me much regret, that I have not been able to
verify this conjecture.

I should also describe the very remarkable manner in which queens, that
lay only the eggs of drones, sometimes deposit them in the cells.
Instead of being placed in the lozenges forming the bottom, they are
frequently deposited on the lower side of the cells, two lines from the
mouth. This arises from the body of such queens being shorter than that
of those whose fecundation has not been retarded. The extremity remains
slender, while the first two rings next the thorax are uncommonly swoln.
Thus, in disposing themselves for laying, the extremity cannot reach the
bottom of the cells on account of the swoln rings; consequently the eggs
must remain attached to the part that the extremity reaches. The worms
proceeding from them pass their vermicular state in the same place where
the eggs were deposited, which proves that bees are not charged with the
care of transporting the eggs as has been supposed. But here they
follow another plan. They extend beyond the surface of the comb t