Insects lay many eggs and reproduce with remarkable rapidity

Insects lay many eggs and reproduce with remarkable rapidity

Insects lay many eggs and reproduce with remarkable rapidity. Their number therefore makes them a foe to be much dreaded. The queen honeybee often lays as many as 4000 eggs in twenty-four hours. A single house fly lays between 100 and 150 eggs in one day. The mosquito lays eggs in quantities of from 200 to 400. The white ant often lays 80,000 in a day, and so continues for two years, probably laying no less than 40,000,000 eggs. In one summer the bluebottle fly could have 500,000,000 descendants if they all lived. The plant louse, at the end of the fifth brood, has laid in a single year enough eggs to produce 300,000,000 young. Of course every one knows that, owing to enemies and diseases (for the insects have enemies which prey on them just as they prey on plants) comparatively few of the insects hatched from these eggs live till they are grown.

Source: Agriculture for Beginners