As a general rule the royal lady, not meeting drones straightway upon her issue from the hive, spends a little time in reconnoitring her home, and then, often not till her second day's exit, sails away high into the air, and sometimes to a considerable distance horizontally as well. "A Renfrewshire Bee-keeper" states in the _British Bee Journal_, of May 1877, that an undoubted instance had come to his knowledge in which a common queen, located five miles distant in a bee-line measured upon the Ordnance map, had become impregnated by one of his own Italian drones--these being positively the only Italians in the entire district. On the queen's return--that is, supposing her object to have been achieved--she will exhibit the male organ adhering to her extremity, and sometimes she is unable to free herself of it, nor can the bee-keeper give her any assistance without the risk of effects as fatal to herself as they were to her spouse. The explanation of this series of phenomena lies in the structure of the organ itself. It is simply the expanded prolongation of the seminal duct, and is attached to the orifice like the sleeve of a coat to the shoulder, but is wholly internal. To be protruded it must therefore be turned literally inside out, and to effect this a powerful inflation is required, in which act the forces of the system are in some way fatally ruptured; while, as Professor Leuckart very rationally deduces--thus clearing up another mystery--it is only when the breathing vessels are filled by motion in the air that the drone is able to accomplish it at all. Then the singular scales and protuberances with which the organ is beset render it when once inserted very difficult of withdrawal, even if its owner were not already dead. Mr. Langstroth remarks as to the design of this seemingly harsh provision that in default of it the queen would be compelled to remain with the drone much longer in the air, thus incurring far greater danger of falling a prey to some passing bird. After all it is undoubtedly one of those instances as to which it may be said of Nature, in Tennyson's words:-- "So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life." Her majesty, although thus left a widowed, is by no means a sorrowful bride, for in from two to three days she becomes the happy mother of a large family. Such at least is the normal rule, but should the season be late in the autumn she may not commence laying till the following spring. It cannot be said that she pays no respect to the memory of her departed lord, for she never marries again. Once impregnated--as is the case with most insects--the queen bee continues productive during the remainder of her existence.