THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



229 



NEW OBSERVATIONS ON 



THE NATURAL HISTORY 



OF BEES. 



By Francis Huber. 



(Contiimed from p. 204, Vol. III.) 



This second absence was much 

 longer than the first ; it occupied 

 twenty-seven minutes. We now 

 found her in a state very different 

 from that in which she was after 

 lier former excursion ; the organs 

 distended by a substance, thick and 

 hard, very much resembling the 

 matter in the vessels of the male ; 

 completely similar to it indeed in 

 color, and consistence.^ 



But more evidence than mere re- 

 semblance being requisite to estab- 

 lish that the female had returned with 

 the prolific matter of the male, we 

 allowed the queen to enter the hive 

 and confined her there. In two 

 days we found her belly swollen, and 

 she had already laid .nearly a hun- 

 dred eggs in the worker cells. To 

 confirm our discovery we made sev- 

 eral other experiments and with the 

 same success. 



I shall continue to transcribe my 

 journal. 



On the second of July, the weather 

 being very fine, a number of males 

 left the hives and we set at liberty 

 a young virgin queen eleven days 

 old whose hive had always been de- 

 prived of them. 



Having quickly left the hive, she 

 returned to examine it and then 

 rose out of sight. She came back 



lit will afterwards appear that what we 

 took for the generative mattei- was the male 

 organ lel'tiu the body of the female, a discov- 

 ery wliich we owe to tlie circumstance that 

 shall be Immediately )-elated. I'erhaps I 

 sliould avoid proli.xity by suppressing all my 

 first observations on the im|)regnation ol the 

 queen and passing directly to tlie experiments 

 that prove she carried away the genital organs 

 but on such observations whicli are both new 

 and dflic.ite, and where it Is .so easy to be de- 

 ceived, I ronsider tliat a candid avowal of my 

 errors is doing tlie reader service. This is an 

 additional jiroof to so many others, of ab- 

 solute necessity tliat an observer slionld re- 

 peat all liis experiments a thousand times to 

 obtain tlie certainty (of seeing facts as they 

 reallv exist. 



in a few minutes without any ex- 

 ternal marks of impregnation, and 

 departed again in a quarter of an 

 hour with so rapid a flight that we 

 could scarcely follow her a moment. 

 This absence continued thirty min- 

 utes, but on her return the last ring 

 of the body was open, and the or- 

 gans full of the whitish substance 

 already mentioned ; she was then re- 

 placed in the hive from which all 

 the males were excluded. In two 

 days we found her impregnated. 

 These obsei-vations at length demon- 

 strate why Hattorf obtained results 

 so different from ours. His queens, 

 though in hives deprived of males, 

 had been fecundated, and he hence 

 concludes that sexual intercourse is 

 not requisite for their impregnation, 

 but not having confined the queens 

 to their hives, they had profited by 

 their liberty to unite with the males. 

 We, on the contrary, have sur- 

 rounded our queens with a number 

 of males, yet they continue sterile, 

 because the precautions for confin- 

 ing the males to their hives, had also 

 prevented the queens from departing 

 to seek that fecundation without, 

 which they could not obtain within. 

 The same experiments were repeated 

 on queens twenty, twenty-five and 

 thirty days old. All became fertile 

 after a single impregnation. How- 

 ever, we have remarked some essential 

 peculiarities in the fecundity of those 

 remaining in the virgin state until 

 the twentieth day of their existence, 

 but we shall defer speaking of 

 the fact until being able to present 

 naturalists with observations suffic- 

 iently correct and numerous to merit 

 their attention. Yet, let me add a few 

 words to what I have already said. 

 Though neither my assistant nor my- 

 self has witnessed the commerce of 

 a queen and a drone, we think that 

 after the detail which has been just 

 commenced, no doubt of the fact 

 can remain, nor can its necessity to 

 effect impregnation be disputed. 

 \To be confi?wed.'] 



