210 Prof. von Siebold on the Law of 
This identity of the nourishment of the young brood of the 
workers and drones seems to have been entirely overlooked by 
Landois. A difference between the food of the drones and 
workers, such as Landois lays so much stress upon, does not 
exist. As, from the observations of our most experienced 
breeders of bees, the workers are able to rear a queen from a 
worker larva before it is six days old, and as the workers can, 
by means of royal food, procure a queen from every egg 
normally deposited in a worker-cell, but not from an egg nor- 
mally deposited in a drone-cell, it follows, as a matter of 
course, that in bees the sex is definitely fixed beforehand even 
_ in the egg by the effectuation or omission of fecundation, and 
not merely defined by the difference of the food of the larva. 
The development of the eggs laid by unfertilized queens, 
from which, according to the experience of all observant bee- 
keepers, only drones are produced, is not regarded as parthe- 
nogenesis by Landois; at least the term “‘ parthenogenesis ’’ is 
avoided by him, although he speaks of a primary and a secon- 
dary drone-broodedness, the cause of which is thus explained 
by him: “ that eggs are laid by queens or workers, which are 
furnished with scanty formative materials, from which weakly 
larve must be developed, and consequently drones.” 
Whence does Landois conclude that these eggs laid by drone- 
brooded queens and workers are furnished only with scanty 
formative materials? By what investigation has Landois 
arrived at the knowledge that from such eggs weakly larve, 
and consequently drones, must be developed? Has Landois 
convinced himself by careful observation and exact dissection 
of such drone-mothers of the absence of male semen in their 
sexual organs? Our scientific bee-keepers could state with 
regard to a great number of drone-brooded queens, with cer- 
tainty, that they had remained unfecundated, and that they 
consequently laid unfertilized eggs, but, as experience has 
proved, capable of development, from which, whether depo- 
sited in drone- or worker-cells, only drones are developed. 
The dissection of such drone-mothers, which has been often 
enough undertaken by people well acquainted with the sub- 
ject, has always proved that the seminal receptacle, whether 
normally developed or rudimentary, contained no trace of male 
semen. 
As Landois refers to the fact that, with regard to the pro- 
position that “drones always proceed from unfertilized eggs,” 
Schmid und Klein, ‘ Leitfaden fiir den Unterricht in Theorie und 
Praxis einen rationellen Bienenzucht,’ 1865, p. 26. - 
Vogel, ‘ Praktisches Handbuch der Bienenzucht,’ 1866, p. £9. 
