A further remarkable circumstance is that the rate of egg-laying is also a matter of determination, and not of necessity, on the part of the queen; for when a transfer has been made from a weak to a strong hive, the number of eggs deposited has been known to vary, within two days, from none to two thousand in twenty-four hours. In the one case the mother-bee knew her colony was not strong enough to keep up the requisite warmth for hatching and developing her progeny; in the other, she proceeded vigorously with her functions, the further progress of the young being secured by the abundance of the population sufficing to keep up the proper temperature, and to render all needed attention to the larvæ in their further development. The ordinary rate of laying, under favourable conditions, varies from 600 to 800 eggs a day; but, under pressure of specially suitable conditions, from i,000 to 1,200 are not unfrequently deposited. Langstroth and Von Berlepsch have seen six laid in a minute; and the latter observer, on supplying a queen with some new empty comb, found after twenty-four hours more than 3,000 eggs had been laid. If this queen on the average got rid of five eggs per minute, the total number just mentioned would have been deposited in ten hours, so that she would have had fourteen hours for rest. The queen kept up her rate for twenty days, in which time she had filled 57,000 cells, and, what is very remarkable, her fecundity is said to have continued for five years, during which period she must have laid nearly a million and a-half of eggs. Dzierzon says, "_Most_ queens, in spacious hives, and in a favourable season, lay 60,000 in a month, and a specially fertile queen, in the four years which she on an average lives, lays over a million eggs." These numbers will give some idea of the immense expenditure of life that is continually going on. To keep up these very great productive energies, it is evident that large quantities of food must be consumed by the mother-bee, and, as we should expect, the amount taken varies in the ratio of the vigour of egg-laying. It sometimes happens that, in the very height of her duties, sufficient cells are not forthcoming as places of deposit for eggs; and, in that case, the queen leaves some on the combs, or at the bottom of the hive. Strange to say, the worker-bees greedily devour such waifs and strays. In this respect we observe a great difference between ants and bees. Among the latter we do not find that passionate love and care for the eggs and larvæ which so strongly mark the former. Other circumstances of a similar kind, to be noted later on, show, on the part of bees, an intense regard for stores rather than progeny, notwithstanding their affection and devotion to the mother-bee, whose functions they thus acknowledge as all-important to the race.