128 J. HUNTER ON THE QUEEN BEE. 



drones are males, and what I have just said, will, of course, have 

 informed you that the queen is the female ; and the question 

 naturally arises,what are the workers ? They used to be styled neuters, 

 but they are not so, they also, as well as the queen, are females, 

 differing in the fact that their sexual organs are not fully developed. 

 Drones, workers, and queens, of course, are all bred primarily from 

 eggs, and those gentlemen who have made no special acquaintance 

 with bee history, will perhaps feel surprised when I say that the 

 eggs which produced the queen and the workers were, when deposited 

 by the mother bee, identically of the same kind, and either could 

 at the will of the bees, who may even be influenced by the will 

 of the bee master, by skilfully directing them, as his agents, be 

 made to give birth to either queens or workers — nay, I will even go 

 further, and say, that 1 believe it possible that the skilful experi- 

 mentalist could so direct that some selected eggs, which, left to 

 themselves, would give eventual birth to drones, should be made to 

 produce drones, workers, or queens at will. To elucidate this 

 problem, I must beg your attention while I trace the history of a 

 bee, not only from the deposition of the egg, but from the growth 

 of the latter in the ovary of the mother, and it will also involve an 

 explanation of the theory of Parthenogenesis. 



On dissection of a queen, we find within her abdomen a pair of 

 ovaries, as on the diagram to which I direct your attention, as also 

 to the preparation of these organs under the microscope. We see 

 each ovary consists of a great number of tubes, containing eggs in 

 various stages of development, and all these tubes lead to a right or 

 left duct which again unites into one main channel down which the 

 eggs pass ; at the side of this latter duct we find a little globular 

 sac opening into the oviduct ; this sac is called the spermatheca, ' 

 and is filled, when the queen has had copulation with the male, with 

 the usual whitish seminal fluid, containing countless thousands of 

 spermatozoa in full activity. I have here an impregnated queen, from 

 which I will show you it is easy to dissect out the spermatheca, and 

 verify its contents to be as I state. Seeing these active bodies all 

 wriggling and twisting like so many eels, it is hard to believe they 

 are not animalcules, as was long thought. To return to the eggs : 

 when arrived at maturity they glide down the oviduct from either 

 ovary, and on passing the opening of the spermatheca, receive one or 

 more spermatozoa, which, penetrating the egg's substance, causes 

 the birth of a worker larva ; but it may so happen that the egg in 



