June 6, 1901. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



359 



honey as the brood hatches, which may be extracted after 

 all brood has hatched. 



Should we have full sets of combs full of white honey, 

 and we have more colonies to shake off, I practice givin;;- a 

 set of these heavy combs instead of a hive full of empty 

 frames. I nei>er hive a young swarm on empty combs — not 

 in my locality. I give either empty frames with starters or 

 solid honey-combs. The honey in the latter will always go 

 up into the sections as soon as the room is needed for breed- 

 ing ; but of course the honey must be of good color or it 

 will spoil the looks of the nice white clover or basswood 

 honey the bees may be storing in the sections at the time. 



Some bee-keepers advocate and practice hiving young 

 swarms— and shaken-off colonies come under the same 

 heading — on frames of foundation. Aside from getting 

 perfect combs I can see no advantage in this practice. 

 Foundation in the sections pays well, however. 



In case I want any increase in the out-apiary I take the 

 colony that has two or three extra brood-chambers and 

 move it to a new location : the two uppermost brood-cham- 

 bers, neither one containing brood young enough for queen- 

 rearing, I place back on the same stand, giving queen or 

 queen-cell in a protector. Of course we must be sure that 

 the queen is in the part moved. If we have placed an 

 excluder on, a week previous, we can be very positive where 

 the queen is. The queen must always go to the new loca- 

 tion. Extracting combs are given to the divided colonies 

 as well as to all colonies not working in sections. 



If it should seem desirable to reinforce any of the 

 shaken-off colonies, a hive full of brood, after it has stood 

 over an excluder for two weeks, answers the purpose well ; 

 I take it, bees and all, and place it over an escape on top of 

 the colony to be re-inforced. — American Bee-Keeper. 



Ontario Co., N. Y. 



The Dzlerzon Theory of Parthenogenesis- 

 Digestion. 



BY PROF. A. J. COOK. 



IT has always pained me to read anything reflecting upon 

 one of the greatest discoveries ever made in natural 

 history, that of Dr. Dzierzon, of Germany. The 

 thoughtful bee-keeper may wonder at this remark. He 

 says we may all note that virgin queens lay eggs and that 

 these prove fertile. Yet they always produce male bees 

 and none other. Old queens also frequently become wholly 

 drone-layers. Laying workers are exclusively drone-pro- 

 ducers. Surely, if we think carefully upon all these facts 

 we would not wonder that the theorj' of parthenogenesis in 

 regard to the production of drone-bees might be suggested 

 to so thoughtful a bee-keeper as was the great German 

 priest. Strange others had not made the discovery before 

 Dzierzon did. Yet we would have supposed the circulation 

 of the blood would have been easier of discovery. Yet it 

 was not made until 1616. And this discovery by Harvey is 

 considered one of the greatest ever made. 



It is also easy for us to prove the correctness of the 

 Dzierzon theory. Every extensive and observant bee- 

 keeper has had ofttimes in his apiary queens that have 

 failed to mate. He has noted that these queens would lay 

 eggs, and he has also been disgusted to note that the entire 

 progeny were drones. Whenever we read, then, that some 

 apiarist of an experimental turn of mind has removed the 

 eggs from drone-cells into worker-cells, and vice versa, and 

 in so doing has changed the sex, we have a perfect right to 

 put a large interrogation point after all his statements. 

 Like the matter of mating in confinement, we may well 

 write, "Interesting if true," but undoubtedly not true. 

 Dzierzon's theory is a very great one, and all praise is due 

 the great German bee-keeper. 



As the readers of the bee-papers know, the Dzierzon 

 theory has recently been called in question over and over 

 again by no less authority than F. Dickel, of Darmstadt. 

 He was editor of the Nordlinger Bienenzeitung. He holds 

 that his experiments prove that normally all eggs were 

 fecundated. He claims to have transferred eggs from drone 

 to worker cells, and that these latter developed into work- 

 ers. The reverse he also claims to have found true. It will 

 be remembered that von Siebold and Leuckart proved by 

 microscopic examinations that Dzierzon was right in his 

 conclusion. Dickel contends that the dicta of these great 

 scientists is no longer to be accepted. He says truly that 

 the sperm-cell or spermatozoa would not be seen except at a 

 very early stage in the development of the egg, and that 

 very likely these observers made their investigation so lato 



that they would not have noted the sperm-cell although it 

 may have been there at an earlier period. This is true as 

 Dickel states, yet it is also a fact that in case of fecunda- 

 tion the spermatozoa are succeeded by the sperm nucleus and 

 a starlike body known as the sperm aster. These are 

 obnoxious, and their presence makes certain that a sperm- 

 cell was previously in the egg. 



Recently A. Weismann, under the title, " Uber die Par- 

 thenogenese der Bienen." in Anat. Anzeiger, gives the 

 results of three years' investigations. Weismann urges that 

 there is no ground to doubt that von Siebold saw semi- 

 nal filaments (even two to four in a single egg). Blochman, 

 by sectioning eggs with the microtome, has seen the same, 

 and these results have been confirmed later by Petrunke- 

 witsch. These, however, von Siebold could only have seen 

 in the freshest eggs, which were all taken from worker- 

 cells. The 27 drones-eggs which von Siebold studied, were 

 all above twelve hours old, and so the failure to find the 

 sperm-cells in these was not proof that they might not 

 have been there at an earlier period. 



The material that Weismann used in his experiments 

 was principally obtained from Dickel himself. The eggs 

 were taken from the cells, put at once into a preservative 

 fluid, and sent to Weismann. Weismann finds that whether 

 the eggs are fecundated or not can only be determined with 

 certainty when it is killed at the time of the second matur- 

 ation spindle. In the stage of the first maturation spindle, 

 the nucleus of the sperm-cells is either without radiations, 

 or else the sperm filament has not been transformed into a 

 sperm nucleus. In either case there is great doubt if the 

 sperm-cell can be recognized with certainty. In the second 

 spindle stage, however, the radiations of the sperm aster 

 are complete, and there is no danger of either overlooking 

 or misinterpreting them. Petrunkewitsch sectioned one 

 hundred and twenty-three eggs, which were in the first 

 spindle stage. Twenty-nine of these were worker-eggs, 

 and twenty-three showed the sperm nucleus with evident 

 radiation. On the other hand, not a single sperm aster was 

 found in any of the ninety-four eggs from drone-cells. 

 The result from the study of sections of eggs taken in the 

 second spindle stage was still more conclusive. Of the 

 sixty-two eggs taken from worker-cells, there was no mis- 

 take regarding the presence of the sperm aster. Two hun- 

 dred and seventy-two eggs were taken from drone-cells and 

 only one of these contained the significant radiation. As 

 every bee-keeper knows, occasionally a worker-bee comes 

 forth from a drone-cell. As I show in my " Bee-Keepers' 

 Guide," the queen adds or withholds the sperm-cell at will. 

 She may occasionally make a mistake. As I show in my 

 book, she often does when she first commences to lay, as 

 we frequently find at such times, drones scattered through 

 the worker-brood. That, as Weismann suggests, she should 

 occasionally make a mistake in depositing drone-eggs is no 

 marvel. In the case where Weismann found the sperm 

 aster in the egg from a drone-cell, no doubt the queen made 

 such a mistake when she laid the eggs. Weismann, after 

 making these elaborate experiments, concludes that Dzier- 

 zon's views are fully confirmed — normal eggs laid in 

 drone-cells are not fecundated, and that those laid in 

 worker-cells are always fecundated. 



Dickel makes the observation that as soon as the queen 

 lays eggs, workers enter the cell and busy themselves in 

 some kind of manipulation. He thinks that they add 

 saliva. In case he is correct in this observation, his con- 

 clusion that this has something to do with determining sex 

 does not follow. Dickel further adds that if the eggs are 

 covered at once after being laid, so that the bees can not 

 visit them, they will not hatch even though left where the 

 warmth of the hive would seem to make the conditions 

 favorable. It has been suggested that in this case the eggs 

 are coated with saliva and thus the escape of moisture is 

 prevented which would otherwise prevent their hatching. 

 I think there is some doubt about this, but in any event the 

 determination of sex is in no way dependent upon these 

 early visits of the bees. If the eggs are fecundated, either 

 queens or workers will result ; if not, we may as surely 

 expect drones. The determination of the queen or work- 

 ers is unquestionably dependent upon the ciuantity and 

 quality of the food furnished them. 



Dickel urges that there isadifterence between drones pro- 

 duced by laying workers and those produced by queens, and 

 he believes that the former arc functionally imperfect. I 

 have never believed that we knew that this was true. 

 Weismann says that he sees no proof that it is so. There is, 

 however, a slight though constant difference in the devel- 

 opment of the eggs from the two different sources. This 

 being true, it would not be surprising if we should find that 



