FERTILIZATION IN THE HONEY-BEE 283 
mating also contains pure mucus. In the oviducts the sperms 
tend to separate out from the mucus, to gather along the walls 
of the oviducts, and in the folds of the chitinous wall in the region 
of the aperture of the ‘sperm pump’ leading to the spermatheca; 
and they alone, without the mucus, enter the spermatheca.*® 
The mucus disappears gradually from the oviducts. It is 
probably absorbed. 
The bulk of the sperms have entered the spermatheca within 
four and one-half hours after copulation; practically all of them 
may enter within six and one-half hours. Their manner of 
getting there has not been determined, though their progress is 
not altogether passive, and is possibly guided by a chemotaxis. 
The mucus is absorbed more slowly, being still present in small 
amounts (in one case cited) at eighteen hours after mating. One 
of its functions is evidently mechanical, to follow the spermatic 
fluid through the organs of drone and queen, forcing all of this 
fluid well up into the oviducts, where it will be retained even 
though some loss of content of the vagina might follow the tearing 
of the penis from the drone. Another function is apparently 
to seal off, by almost instantaneous coagulation on contact with 
air, the torn end of the copulatory organ, and thus prevent 
backflow of secretion upon rupture of this part (as coagulation 
of blood prevents loss from a wound in higher animals). Con- 
cerning its physiological function in the queen, if it has any, 
these data give no information, though the cbvious inference 
is that it may be a stimulus to the ovaries.§® 
5 The cavity of the spermatheca is far too small to contain the mucus or any 
considerable part of it (fig. 1, B and C) that is injected into the queen’s oviducts 
at the time of fertilization; nor is any trace of it found there, nor in the duct 
leading to it, nor in the vagina immediately adjacent to the duct. The sperms 
alone are so densely packed into the spermatheca as to preclude the presence of 
any great amount of material of any kind as a medium for them; and in the virgin 
queen the :permatheca is well distended with a fluid of its own into which the 
sperms pass after the queen’s mating. 
®6In one case of artificial fertilization, reported by Jaeger and Howard 
(Artificial fertilization of queen bees. Science, N.S., vol. 40, p. 720, 1915) to 
have resulted in a short period of fertile egg production, injection of the drone’s 
secretions with a pipette is understood to have been responsible for what degree 
of insemination was obtained. As to whether this was due to the injection of 
