THE LAYING WORKER
When the colony is queenless, worker bees may develop the ability to lay eggs. As they have never mated, they lay unfertilised eggs, which develop into drones, and thus stock the hive with these royal cumberers of the commune. It is interesting to note the difference in prejudices that obtain in the hive and in human society. In the latter we regard it as scandalous when the female, avoiding the duties of motherhood, goes abroad gathering honey and pollen at her own sweet will; but in bee society it is not merely a scandal, but a misfortune, when the worker bee has ambitions to be a mother. The laying worker is a bee gone wrong and a menace to the colony. At the same time she is a nuisance to the bee-keeper and great may be his tribulation before he is rid of her. As might be expected, she does not do her work well; she usually does not lay her eggs in regular order, as does the queen, but scatters them here and there and everywhere, and is quite likely to fasten them to the sides of the cells, instead of to the bottom. She lays her eggs sometimes several together in worker as well as in drone cells.
As a laying worker looks like any other worker, it is useless to try to find her. However, her presence may be detected by the irregular appearance of the brood, and especially by the high drone caps on the worker cells and, finally, by a superabundance of drones. To meet this difficulty, an ounce of prevention is worth several pounds of cure, and great care
