Re: Eggs not hatching

Greetings
I just want to take a moment to thank the group for their steady flow of "hard problems" and even the pushback against my efforts to clarify, as that only redoubles my effort to offer reliable information. Here we have an interesting case

Roberts (1953), in Wisconsin by artificial insemination,
mated the daughters of a certain queen with their own
brothers, and then back-crossed four second-generation
queens with drone sons of the original mother, whereupon
two of these queens laid only nonhatching eggs.
Another daughter of the original queen was out-crossed to
drones of a cordovan strain, and one of her daughters was
then back-crossed to drones of the original queen; then
10 of the third-generation queens were allowed to mate
naturally, whel'eupon four of them laid only nonhatching
eggs. Roberts therefore postulated that the original
mother was heterozygous for a recessive mutation, which
resulted in nonhatchability of all eggs laid by queens
homozygous for the mutation.

DISCUSSION. 
ln most of the literature there is general agreement with the author's observations in regard to queens whose eggs all fail to hatch,-that (1) this abnormality is rare, (2) such queens lay large numbers of eggs in a regular manner for a long time, (3) their ovaries and fat body appear normal, (4) their spermathecae contain abundant motile sperm, (5) some embryonic development occurs, and(6) no microscopically visible parasites are present.

SUMMARY.
Five queen honey bees, Apis mellifera L., were observed, and literature is reviewed on others, which laid large numbers of eggs in a regular manner but whose eggs all failed to hatch. Such records are rare, but cases have been reported from Germany, the United States, Switzerland, Canada, England, and Czechoslovakia. Such queens may continue laying regularly for more  than 4 months. Some queens may lay hatchable eggs early in life, then later lay only nonhatching eggs. Eggs laid in drone cells also fail to hatch. The true cause of this abnormality remains unknown.

Citations
Anonymous. 1906. Eggs that fail to hatch. ArneI'.Bce Jour. 46(44):918-9.
Anonymous. 1922. Defective egg-laying.Amer. Bee Jour. 62(11): 519.
Betts, A. D. 1924.Eggs that do not hatch. Bee World 5(8): 128-9.
B[etts], A. D. 1926.[Addledeggs.]Bee World 8(7): 107.
Gooderham, C. B. 1931. Eggs fail to hatch. Glean. Bee Cult. 59(1l): 696.
Miller, C. C. 1906. Queen's eggs that fail to hatch. Amer. Bee Jour. 46(40): 846.
Roberts, W. C. 1958. Unpublished report.

Hitchcock, J. D. (1956). Honey bee queens whose eggs all fail to hatch. Journal of Economic Entomology, 49(1), 11-14.

PLB

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