All the eggs are laid by one queen, who requires during this season a large amount of nourishment, so much, indeed, that ten or twelve working bees (_i.e._ sterile females) are set apart as her feeders. Leaving the 'royal cell,' she walks over the nursery-combs attended by a retinue of workers, and drops a single egg into each open cell. It is a highly remarkable fact that the queen is able to control the sex of the eggs which she lays, and only deposits drone or male eggs in the drone cells, and worker or female eggs in the worker cells--the cells prepared for the reception of drone larvæ being larger than those required for the worker larvæ. Young queens lay more worker eggs than old queens, and when a queen, from increasing age or any other cause, lays too large a proportion of drone eggs, she is expelled from the community or put to death. It is remarkable, also, under these circumstances, that the queen herself seems to know that she has become useless, for she loses her propensity to attack other queens, and so does not run the risk of making the hive virtually queenless. There is now no doubt at all that the determining cause of an egg turning out male or female is that which Dzierzon has shown, namely, the absence or presence of fertilisation--unfertilised eggs always developing into males, and fertilised ones into females. The manner, therefore, in which a queen controls the sex of her eggs must depend on some power that she has of controlling their fertilisation. The eggs hatch out into larvæ, which require constant attention from the workers, who feed them with the chyle or bee-bread already mentioned. In three weeks from the time that the egg is deposited, the white worm-like larva has passed through its last metamorphosis. When it has emancipated itself its nurses assemble round it to wash and caress it, as well as to supply it with food. They then clean out the cell which it has left.