THE AMEKICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



103 



i voly induced to fertilize tlie egg to be deposited 

 in il. B.y this iiioMiis D/ierzou might liavc ex- 

 lihiincd Ihiit iilicuonuMioii in thehco-hive Avliich 

 has ahviiys excited astonislinieiit as a wondor- 

 t'lil iiiysteiy, namely, that faculty possessed by 

 a uovmal queen of furuishing the drone-cells, 

 ^vorkereells, and queen-ceils of the combs, 

 ■which are arranged in dilTerent number and 

 order in every bee-hive with the right eggs. 

 It would certainly still remain to he proved 

 from the organization and arrangement of the 1 

 scpaiale sections of the female sexual organs, 

 lliat it really was possible for a fertilized queen, 

 by the presence of decidedly voluntary mus- 

 cles, to retain the semen in the seminal recepta- 

 cle or evacuate it at will. From tlic investiga- 

 tion above referred to, which I made upon fer- 

 tilized female insects, it appears that by the 

 copulation of insects the ovaries are not fecun- 

 dated, but that the seminal receptacle is filled 

 with semen, and that the fecundation of the egg 

 only takes place during oviposition at the mo- 

 ment when the egg to be laid slips by the orifice 

 of the seminal receptacle in the oviduct. Witb 

 regard to this, I may refer to those female in- 

 sects, which, after the completion of copulation, 

 survive their males in the autumn, hybernate 

 with the ovaries imperfectly developed, and 

 only lay fertilized eggs capable of development 

 in the following spring, after their ovaries have 

 become filled with mature eggs. Such females, 

 therefore, preserve the male semen received 

 during copulation in their seminal receptacle, 

 keep it fresh probably by the aid of the secre- 

 tion of the appendicular glands of the seminal 

 capsule, and evacuate it at pleasure when re- 

 quired during the act of laying. For this pur- 

 pose particular voluntary muscles do really 

 exist. I have observed them in the vicinity of 

 the exterior of the seminal capsule in many 

 female beetles. In the immediate vicinity of 

 the seminal receptacle of female bees also, I 

 have seen A^oluntary muscles without, however, 

 being able to state with certainty what definite 

 functions they have to perform. From this the 

 possibility of a voluntary evacuation of semen 

 from the seminal receptacle of fecundated female 

 insects could certainly not be denied, especially 

 as the voluntary deposition of male and feruale 

 eggs by a ciueen-bee may be proved by the 

 brood produced from her. After I had called 

 the attention of Yon Bcrlepsch to the existence 

 of voluntary muscles of the seminal receptacle, 

 he expressed' himself upon this point in the fol- 

 lowing way: "Probably the queen has the fa- 

 culty of closing the orifice of the receptacle at 

 l)leasure, perhaps bythe contraction of the whole 

 vesicular membrane, or even that of removing 

 and somewhat retracting the whole receptacle 

 sidewaj's from the tube of the oviduct into 

 which it opens, so that those eggs which she 

 wishes to deposite in male cells may glide past 

 untouched by tlie semen." 



The power of a fertilized queen to lay male 

 or female eggs at pleasure, may also be proved 

 by the following experiment. In a Dzierzon 

 hive we may, to a certain extent, compel a fer- 

 tilized queen to lay male or female eggs. The 

 construction of one of these hives permits the 

 nature of the combs prepa'rcd in ilby the work- 



ers to be closely inspected. If the workers of 

 a hive furnished with a normal queen prepare 

 too many drone-cells, which wc mny, pcrhaj)?, 

 not wish to have, or if the hive requires more 

 workers, we UG^iy remove the drone combs, 

 whose cells the ciueen would have supplied with 

 male, that is to say, unfertilized eggs, and in- 

 stead of these suspend combs with empty 

 workers cells. The queen will furnish these 

 combs also with eggs, and indeed to correspond 

 with the nature of the cells, with female or fer- 

 tilized eggs, from which the workers may rear 

 their like. In the summer we nuiy induce the 

 queens of populous hives to lay dronc^eggs, if we 

 suspend an empty drone-con)l) in the midst of 

 the hive. From this it follows that the intelli- 

 gent bee-keeper has it in his own hands in what 

 direction he will turn the activity of this or that 

 colony of bees, and that by suitable assistance 

 he may prevent the disorganization and de- 

 morilization of a bee-hive. 



Before I turn to the strictly scientific proofs 

 whicb I have still to furnish, in order to give 

 permanence to the view upon the reproduction 

 of the bees put forward by Dzierzon only as a 

 hypothesis, and raise it to the rank of a theory, 

 so that it may take its proper place in the his- 

 tory of animal development, I will here cite a 

 few more empirical proofs, by which alone the 

 correctness of Dzierzou's theory would be con- 

 vincingly shown, if its importance did not re- 

 quire still more impressive facts for its estab- 

 lishment. 



I must not omit to mention that Dzierzon 

 himself, after calling a number of opponents 

 into the field by the promulgation of this new 

 theory, and after all possible imaginable objec- 

 tions had been raised from the most various 

 sides against its correctness, began to doubt the 

 perfect tenability of his theory. Notwithstand- 

 ing that Dzierzon very recently expresses him- 

 self with peculiar reserve and caution upon cer- 

 tain points of his theory,* other experienced 

 apiaria-ns still held very firmly to it, as after it 

 had once become familiar to them by its assist- 

 ance every occurrence in a bee-hive, however 

 unexpected or appi^ently strange, was instantly 

 understood by them. 



Above all we must here mention Herr von 

 Berlepsch, who has set himself the task of test- 

 ing Dzierzon's theory in every direction, with 

 his abundance of bee-hives. His establishment 

 of bees, which is most carefully attended to, and 

 kept in the most exemplary order, also offers 

 quite uniquely in its kind by the disposition, ar- 

 rangement, and mass of its materials, the best 

 and most certain opportunity- of testing and an- 

 swering those questions relating to bee-life raised 

 by Dzierzon. 



The following extremely interesting experi- 

 ments were made by Berlepsch, which must 

 again convert Dzierzon to himself, since he ap- 

 pears to have become a dombter of his own 

 theory. 



In May, 1854, Berlepsch caught an old fertile 



I queen and confined her in a small queen cage, 



I in order to incorporate her with a new eolonj- of 



bees after its establishment. She was in the 



*See his Bienevfreund aus Schksien, ISb^l, No. S, page 04. 



