American Bee Journal. 



EDITED AND PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL WAGNER, WASHINGTON, D. C. 



Vol. III. 



HNOVE^IBEH, ISGT'. 



No. 5. 



True Parthenogenesis in the Honey Bee. 



BY PROf. C. T. E. VON SIEBOLD. 



Whilst I was occupied witli my task of estab- 

 lishing a parthenogenesis in Psyche Helix and 

 Selcnohia triquetreUa and Uchenella^ I did not 

 omit to bring witliin the limit of my investiga- 

 tions other insects also, ofTvhichthe story Avent, 

 that the females were capable of independent 

 reproduction in the virgin state without the as- 

 sistance of the male individual. It was of im- 

 portance to look carefully at the honey-bee, 

 upon the reproduction of which the most ex- 

 traordinary statements have been made at all 

 times by the various bee-keepers. Amongst 

 these statements my attention had already been 

 turned to that remarkable faculty which was 

 ascribed to certain worker-bees, and which was 

 said to consist in their being able to lay eggs 

 capable of development without copulation.* 

 In the year 1851, therefore, I put myself in 

 communication from Breslau with various bee- 

 keepers, and in this way became acquainted 

 with the distinguished apiarian Dzierzon, pas- 

 tor at Carlsmarkt, near Brieg, in Silesia. By 

 this apiarian, who is gifted with an admirably 

 acute power of observation and free from pre- 

 judices, I was furnished partly in letters and 

 partly Ijy word of mouth, with information 

 upon the economy of bees and the most import- 

 ant phenomena of bee-lile, of a kind such as I 

 could never have obtained from zoological and 

 entomological works. What surprised me most 

 in these communications, Avas the entirely new 

 theory of reproduction which Dzierzon had es- 

 tablished, with which he then made me ac- 



* Hunter ia his paper "On Bees," Phil. Trans., 1792, refers 

 to this opinion, but uad been unable to confirm it. "It is 

 asserted by Kitm that when a hive i.s deprived of its queen, 

 laborers lay eggs;" * * * and Wilhclm says that it is 

 the laborers only that lay drone-eggs. Hunter then quotes 

 from Schirach: -'A young queen lately hatched was put in a 

 hive, winch had been previously a.scertained to contain no 

 drones, and whose quecu was removed; and yet the young 

 bees laid eggs." L'pon which ho remarks: '•There is no 

 mystery in this; but did they hatch?" The definite reply to 

 this que.'-tion, and the nature of the product of the virgin 

 egg, are amongst the valuable facts established by modern 

 research and observation. 



quainted, and by which all the phenomena re- 

 lating to the process of reproduction in the* 

 bees, which so often border upon the marvel- 

 lous, may be completely explained. 



One of these remarkable phenomena is the 

 property just referred to, possessed by some 

 worker-bees of laying eggs capable of develop- 

 ment, a property which is denied by no obser- 

 vant bee-keeper, but could not hitherto be sat- 

 isfactorily explained in any way. The dissec- 

 tion of the worker-bees had shown that they 

 possess undeveloped ovaries, that the seminal 

 receptacle is only imperfectly developed in 

 them, and that, by reason of the abortion of 

 their copulative organs, they are by no means 

 in a condition to copulate with a drone (a male 

 bee) and allow themselves to be fertilized by 

 him. But whence then should this reproduc- 

 tive faculty of certain worker-bees arise? At 

 first I attempted to bring this reproductive 

 power into connection with the Alternation of 

 Generations, and expressed the supposition that 

 similar circumstances might occur among the 

 bees as amongst the aphides; and that conse- 

 ciuently amongst the bees individuals were pro- 

 duced at certain times, which, as nurse-like 

 creatures, could produce brood, without fertili- 

 zation. But if nurses really did occur in the 

 bee-colonies, these must have been recogniza- 

 ble by dissection, as instead of ovaries they 

 would contain germ-stocks, and no trace of a 

 seminal receptacle. I, at the same time, ex- 

 pressed the wish that I might soon have an op- 

 portunity given to me of submitting baes Avhich 

 had been ascertained to be fertile workers, to a 

 careful dissection and microscopic examination, 

 in order to decide whether or no they really 

 were nurses. 



But when I became acquainted with Dzier- 

 zou's theory of the propagation of the bees, and 

 constantly grew more and more convinced of 

 its correctness, it was evident to me that we 

 cannot speak of a nurse-formation amongst the 

 bees. To inform mytselfas completely as pos- 

 sible about this theory, I went myself to Carls- 

 markt and held a conference with Dzierzon on 

 the 2Gth of July, 1801, in which I opposed all 

 possible doubts to his theory of reproduction; 

 but these were constantly set aside by him, and 



