282 G. H. BISHOP 
ously but sparsely through it. This mucus was distinctly more 
fluid than in earlier queens or than that obtained from drones. 
The spermatheca when punctured on a slide poured forth seething 
masses of sperms, with no sign of mucus in the fluid that con- 
tained them. The penis of the drone was not present. 
H (not over eighteen hours). The oviducts of this queen 
were but slightly distended. Sections showed a light-staining 
and but slightly granular mucous mass in the oviducts, not more 
than one-fourth the volume of that in newly mated queens, with 
sperms so scattering that they were found only with considerable 
difficulty. The vagina was empty, except for a few sperms in 
the folds of the dorsal wall near the aperture of the duct to the 
spermatheca. The spermatheca burst in fixation (either through 
osmosis or handling), and most of the content escaped, but what 
remained showed dense clumps of sperms. At this rate, it is 
estimated that the oviducts would have become empty in about 
twenty-four hours from the time of mating. 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 
These observations may be summarized in the following 
account: 
The result of copulation in the bee is not immediate filling 
of the final sperm reservoir, the seminal receptacle of the queen, 
but the sexual secretions of the drone are received temporarily 
in the vagina and oviducts. The two components, spermatic 
fluid from the seminal vesicles and mucus from the accessory 
glands of the drone, are not intimately mixed in copulation, nor 
do they later mix homogeneously in the queen’s organs. The 
white viscous mucus is found as a white central core in (typically) 
each oviduct (in one case most of the mucus was in one oviduct, 
most of the sperm in the other) surrounded by the less viscous 
spermatic fluid; as if the oviduct, partially distended with the 
spermatic fluid which had first entered, then received the more 
viscous mucus as a rod-shaped column through the center of 
its lumen. The vagina is filled with mucus alone, indicating 
that pure mucus was the last to be injected at copulation. The 
end of the copulatory organ brought back by the queen after 
