142 GENERAL NOTES 



must be queenless and broodless with some drones present. 



*' The bees will soon be busy laying and rearing: oueen 

 cells. If any of these seem natnral, that is not lonc^ ones, 

 but jnst like ordinary queen cells, qneens will most 

 (!ertainl.y be found in them, and not only so but nu'^ibers 

 <»f W( iker bees will hatch from worker cells. Hence 

 Punic worker bees haye the power to raise both (lueens 

 and drones from themselves. The instinct seems ]><^vfect 

 in the Punic bees; only partly so in ^>yrians, and it is 

 quite absent in our native bees. I cannot ijo into the 

 matter just now, but should like as many as possible. \yh(^ 

 have ihose bees, to confirm my discovery, incredible as 

 it may seem.'' 



Frojii these quotations it is quite clear that Hewitt had 

 Uiade the ijreatest discovery in the natural history of the 

 bee since ihe time of Dzierzon, and that he antici])ated 

 Onions ])y at least 2(1 j^ears. The bees of Africa are 

 probably nearer to the ancestral stock, and the workers* 

 still retain the power of reverting to the primitive con- 

 dition Avhen every female was a jjotential mother. 

 Hewitt's remark that the power is less perfectly developed 

 in the Syrian bee and totally absent in native bees, is 

 highly significant. Dzierzon and his co-workers, being 

 acquainted only with the moi'e specialized bees of Europe, 

 had no cliance of making this discovery, and made the 

 very usual mistake of generalizing from insufiieient data. 



Meantime only tlie barest facts are mentioned. ')ut it 

 is evicU^nt that a new vista has been o])ened up. and that 

 we must now consider parthenogenesis in the honeybee 

 from <juite a ditieient standpoint. 



Agricultural College, 



Aberdeen. Scorland. 



L L 1 B R A R Y ^ 

 V>''/ Mas*- ^y 



