lOi 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOUENAL. 



normal state, and up to that time had produced 

 the necessary drones and workers. Berlepsch 

 gives the following account of this queen: "As 

 I was closing the lid, (of the queen's cage) which 

 ran in a groove, I pinched the queen so strongly 

 at the apex of tlie abdomen, that she contracted 

 the whole abdomen like a bee that had been 

 stung, and allowed it to drag after her. I thought 

 at first that she was lost, but as she was still liv- 

 ing an hour afterwards, ajid sitting again ex- 

 tended and quiet, I gave her back to her people. 

 She laid, as before, thousands of eggs, but from 

 all these nothing but dro7res were henceforward 

 devdoj)-ed. If T had only dissected this queen as 

 soon as I became aware of her drone-productive- 

 ness, I should at least have seen whether the 

 seminal vesicle was still in existence and nor- 

 mally filled. But I delayed the dissection, and 

 when at length I wished to undertake it, the 

 queen was gone. This certainly was a very re- 

 markable occurrence, which speaking loudly in 

 iavor of Dzierzon's hypothesis of tlie unfecun- 

 dated state of all male eggs, was communicated 

 by me privately to President Buseh for his opin- 

 ion, as I could not then form any definite opinion 

 for myself, not then knowing with certainty that 

 the vesicle is the reccpiaeulum seminis^ and the 

 white slime (its contents) the sperma virile. 

 Busch, however, was flso unable to Ibrm an 

 opinion; my servant Gunther on the contrary, 

 thought that perhaps the receptaculum had been 

 crushed and destroyed. This, however, I re- 

 gard as extremely improbable, as tlie crushing 

 of the receptacle, which is generally very firm, 

 between the soft surrounding parts of the body 

 of the queen, without quickly leading to the 

 death of the latter herself, ■ is scarcely possible. 

 I believe, therefore, that it was only the organs 

 which may act in opening and closing the orifice, 

 or in retracting and advancing the receptacle 

 that were lamed, stiffened," &c. 



If I am to express any opinion upon this inter- 

 esting case, I suppose that by the pinching of the 

 abdomen the seminal receptacle of the queen 

 filled with semen, was torn away from the ovi- 

 duct at its opening point, by which the queen 

 thus injured, was no longer enabled to fertilize 

 her eggs during deposition, and therefore could 

 only lay unfertilized and consecfuently male eggs. 

 Berlepsch reports as follows upon another ex- 

 periment confirmatory of Dzierzon's principal 

 point, which he made in consequence of study- 

 ing J. Muller's Phyrdologiedes Menschen: "Now 

 only did I obtain a full conviction of the existence 

 of the spermatozoa; and Avhen I read in the 

 above mentioned work that high and low temper- 

 ature cause the movements of the spermatozoa to 

 cease, I thought to myself: Now you have a com- 

 plete explanation of Dzierzon's case;* and if it 

 be true that in apis melUfca, the male eggs reg- 

 ularly develope themselves spontaneously into 

 males, but are only converted into female eggs 

 1 y the fecundation of the spermatozoa, every 

 normally fruitful queen must cease to lay female 

 female eggs from the moment when we succeed 

 in rendering the spermatozoa motionless (killing 



*BerIepsch here refers to the case commtinicated hy Dzier- 

 zon, that a queen which had been frofted for a long time, 

 after being brought to life by warmth, only laid male eggs, 

 whilst previously she had also laid female eggs. ' 



them) without destroying the mother herself 

 At the end of June, 1854, therefore, I took three 

 very fruitful queens, imprisoned each of them 

 in a queen cage, went to Muhlhausen and 

 placed the cages in the ice-cellar of an inn-keeper 

 there who was a friend of mine. There I left 

 them for about thirty-six hours. The queens 

 were of course completely benumbed, regularly 

 covered with hoar frost, and when I returned 

 Avith them to Seebach, I exposed them to the 

 sun, which was just rising. For a long time 

 none of them stirred; at last, towards seven 

 o'clock, I observed movements of the feet in one 

 of them. By means of a fine bit of wood I put 

 a little honey upon her proboscis, and in ten or 

 twelve minutes more, she had again returned to 

 life. The two others on the contrary were dead. 

 This appeared very remarkable to me, as even 

 worker-bees, whose vitality, however, is very 

 much weaker than that of "the queens, generally 

 survive such a short freezing; and the only rea- 

 son I can find for it, is that the temperature of the 

 ice-cellar was too low, and therefore the queens 

 were too much penetrated by the frost, if the 

 circumstance that the ciueens were too heavy 

 with eggs, and therefore less able than at other 

 times to bear external injurious influences upon 

 their bodies, may not have co-operated to pro- 

 duce death. I returned the revived queen to her 

 people. She laid, as before, thousands of eggs, 

 but from all of them only drones were evolved. 

 When I subseciuently examined the semen, I 

 found it less consistent and with a yellowish 

 tinge." 



From this extremely interesting experiment, 

 it follows evidently that the male eggs of the 

 bees require no fertilization. The spermatozoids 

 which this queen, exposed to such an intense 

 cold, contained in her seminal receptacle, were 

 certainly benumbed, and did not again become 

 capableof movement after the thawing; so that 

 therefore this ciueen could only have laid unfec- 

 undated eggs, for even if she had emptied the 

 contents of her seminal receptacle over the eggs 

 when laying them in order to fertilize them, the 

 numbed spermatozoids would have remained in- 

 capable of action. 



A third empirical proof by which the principal 

 point of Dzierzon's theory of reproduction is 

 supported, is furnished l)y the phenomena which 

 may be observed in the production of males 

 amongst bees. Attention has only been directed 

 to the production of hybrid bees at a A^ery recent 

 period, since the Italian race of bees has been in- 

 troduced' into Gennany'by Dzierzon and Ber- 

 lepsch. The so-ca>led Italian bees form no sep- 

 arate species, but must only be regarded as a 

 variety of the apis mellifica. These Italian bees 

 are distinguished at the first glance by the leather- 

 yellow color of their abdomen from theunicolor- 

 ous blackish-brown German bees. In the females 

 and workers of the Italian race, the first, second, 

 and third abdominal segments appear of a rusty- 

 yellow color, (colore rufo-ferrugineo) and mar- 

 gined with black. This black margin is very 

 narrow on the first segment, broader on the . 

 second, and broadest on the third. The Italian 

 drones have the middle of the hinder margin of 

 the second, third, and fourth, and often that of 

 the fifth abdominal segment broadly rusty-yellow 



