able, it does not happen even in them. But if in the natural state, the space of eleven months be necessary for the male-eggs to acquire that degree of increment they must have attained when laid, how are we to explain the fact of two or three score of these male-eggs making their appearance before the Mother-bee is six weeks old? Leaving this matter in the obscurity which we cannot dispel, we have only farther to observe, that in every case of retarded impregnation the instinct of the Queen appears to be greatly impaired. She lays her eggs indiscriminately in drone and worker cells; now and then even in royal cells; and does not evince that jealousy and irritable temperament towards her rivals, which, in the natural state, characterize the Queen.
Of the Brood.—In forty-six hours after impregnation, the Queen-bee, as already noticed, begins to lay the eggs of workers, and continues to do so without interruption throughout the season, at the rate of between 100 and 200 a day, unless cold weather intervene, when her operations are suspended, as well as the hatching retarded of the eggs already laid. The fruitfulness of the mother-bee is indeed astonishing. It has been computed that the numbers produced in a hive by one Queen during the laying season, amount to 100,000; and we are satisfied the computation is correct. In the beginning of the year it is a tolerably good stock hive which possesses a population of 2000 or 3000. Yet that same hive shall in June throw off swarms amounting to 40,000 or 50,000; in many cases the first swarm itself, and
