American Bee Journal. 



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



Vol. III. 



JOEOEMIBEK, ISG'?'- 



No. 6. 



Parthenogenesis in the Honey Bee. 



BY PROF. C. T. E. VON SIEBOLD. 



[CONTINUED.] 



It was ascertained anatomically by Made- 

 moiselle Juriue, that the worker bees are noth- 

 ing but female bees whose sexual organs are 

 aborted. By careful dissection the ovarian 

 tubes not perfectly developed may be exhibited 

 in all workers, connected with an undeveloped 

 oviduct. I have already shown in the year 

 1843, that in all workers there is connected with 

 this undeveloped oviduct, an appendage which 

 perfectly represents the seminal receptacle of 

 queens. On this appendage I could discover 

 the seminal duct, the seminal capsule, and the 

 two appendicular glands, with their common 

 efferent duct in the workers; but all these sepa- 

 rate parts of the seminal receptacle were in a 

 very undeveloped state. 



In what follows I will endeavor to explain 

 by what cause the ovarian tubes, which in the 

 normally-formed workers always remain empty, 

 may become exceptionally filled with eggs in 

 certain workers. It is well known to apiarians 

 that in hives which have suddenly lost their 

 queen, the workers, if they wish to put them- 

 selves in possession of a new queen, select some 

 worker-cells furnished witJi an egg or a young 

 larva, and enlarge these into royal cells, (queen's 

 cradles) and that they do not then bring up the 

 larvaj which are excluded from the eggs already 

 laid in these former worker-cells, or which 

 were found in them already excluded in such 

 cells, with the ordinary worker-food, but fur- 

 nish them with royal-food, as indeed all the 

 eggs deposited by a fertilized queen in worker- 

 cells are of onO kind, namely, female. But in 

 order that the female sexual organs of such a 

 larva may acquire their development, the larva 

 must receive royal-food; if, on the contrary, the 

 female sexual organs are to remain undeveloped 

 for the advantage of the organs of the worker- 

 bee destined for work, this object is attained by 

 the administration of worker-food. I leave it 

 undecided in what the distinction between 

 worker and royal food consists; for the apiarians 



have hitherto been at variance, as to whetlier 

 the larva; of workers and queens received the 

 same food, but the latter in greater quantity; or 

 whether the queen's food differs from that Ot 

 the workers not only in its quantity, but also 

 in its quality. From Leuckart's recent investi- 

 gations, however, it appears that there is really 

 a qualitative difference between the two kinds 

 of food. The larvae destined to become work- 

 ers only receive the paste prepared by the work- 

 ers in their digestive organs during the first 

 days of their life, whilst in the latter days of 

 their larval existence they are fed with pollen 

 and honey. The queen-larvae on the contrary, 

 are supplied with tlie above paste during their 

 whole larval existence. Leuckart found the 

 first traces of the internal genital organs in the 

 female larvoe of six days old. It is exactly at 

 this time that the change of food takes place in 

 the worker-larvfe, which, up to this period, are 

 nourished just like the queen-larv?e with the 

 same paste. In this way we get an explana- 

 tion of the circumstance which has been ob- 

 served by most experienced apiarians, that a 

 female larva does not require the usage of a 

 queen from its earliest period to become per- 

 fectly sexual, but that worker-larvte, even sev- 

 eral (six or seven) days old, may alio be reared 

 to queens, when their narrow cells are subse- 

 quently enlarged, and they are abundantly sup- 

 plied with royal-paste instead of with worker's 

 food, (pollen and honey). 



If, then, it is certain that a worker-bee or a 

 queen may be reared indifferently from every 

 larva of a worker-cell derived from a fecundated 

 queen, the case may probably occur in one bee- 

 hive or another, that by some confusion or dis- 

 turbance in the regular distribution of the food, 

 some of the royal food falls to the lot of one or 

 several worker-larvaj in the neighborhood of a 

 queen's cell, into which royal food is carried, 

 by which their sexual organs are more or less 

 developed. By this influence the development 

 of the female genitalia may have been abnor- 

 mally elevated in a worker up to the power of 

 laying true eggs. Such egg-la5nng workers, 

 however, always remain unfecundated; they do 

 not feel like peifect female bees, and undertake 

 no wcdding-tlight; which, indeed, would be of 



