The Life of the Bee
more economical and capacity greater. We have seen, too, that the queen prefers to lay in the smaller cells, for which she is incessantly clamouring. When these are wanting, however, or till they be provided, she resigns herself to laying her eggs in the large cells she finds on her road.
These eggs, though absolutely identical with those from which workers are hatched, will give birth to males, or drones. Now, conversely to what takes place when a worker is turned into queen, it is here neither the form nor the capacity of the cell that produces this change; for from an egg laid in a large cell and afterwards transferred to that of a worker (a most difficult operation, because of the microscopic minuteness and extreme fragility of the egg, but one that I have four or five times successfully accomplished) there will issue an undeniable male, though more or less atrophied. It
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