34 MANUAL OF ZOOLOGY. 



about to examine namely, in the honey-bee the phenomena 

 which have been described cannot be said to be wholly free 

 from doubt. A hive of bees consists of three classes of indi- 

 viduals i. A " queen," or fertile female ; 2. The " workers/' 

 which form the bulk of the community, and are really unde- 

 veloped or sterile females ; and 3. The " drones," or males, 

 which are only produced at certain times of the year. We have 

 here three distinct sets of beings, all of which proceed from a 

 single fertile individual, and the question arises, In what manner 

 are the differences between these produced ? At a certain 

 period of the year the queen leaves the hive, accompanied by 

 the drones (or males), and takes what is known as her "nuptial 

 flight " through the air. In this flight she is impregnated by 

 the males, and it is immaterial whether this act occurs once in 

 the life of the queen, or several times. Be this as it may, the 

 queen, in virtue of this single impregnation, is enabled to pro- 

 duce fresh individuals for a lengthened period, the semen of 

 the males being stored up in a receptacle which communicates 

 by a tube with the oviduct, from which it can be shut off at 

 will. The ova which are to produce workers (undeveloped 

 females) and queens (fertile females) are fertilised on their 

 passage through the oviduct, the semen being allowed to 

 escape into the oviduct for this purpose. The subsequent 

 development of these fecundated ova into workers or queens 

 depends entirely upon the form of the cell into which the 

 ovum is placed, and upon the nature of the food which is 

 supplied to the larva. So far there is no doubt as tothe nature 

 of the phenomena which are observed. It is asserted, how- 

 ever, by Dzierzon and Siebold, that the males or drones are 

 produced by the queen from ova which she does not allow to 

 come into contact with the semen as they pass through the 

 oviduct. This assertion is supported by the fact that if the 

 communication between the receptacle for the semen and the 

 oviduct be cut off, the queen will produce nothing but males. 

 Also, in crosses between the common honey-bee and the Ligu- 

 rian bee, the queens and workers alone exhibit any intermediate 

 characters between the two forms, the drones presenting the 

 unmixed characters of the queen by whom they were pro- 

 duced. 



If these observations are to be accepted as established and, 

 upon the whole, there can be no hesitation in accepting them 

 as in the main correct then the drones are produced by a 

 true process of parthenogenesis ; but some observers main- 

 tain that the development of any given ovum into a drone 

 is really due as in the case of the queens and workers to 



