THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



115 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Voluntary Contractility of the Queen Bee 

 at Oviposition. 



Mr. Eeitor:— It is to bo greatly lamented that 

 the skilful tisheniian, Dzierzon, has hauled the 

 biggest fishes from the melliiluous river of Bee- 

 dom. Yet we ne*?d not wonder at his success 

 when Avc consider that his "great big" bait, sea- 

 soned with the penetrating genetic flavor of teu- 

 tonic scrutiny, has made it impossible for the 

 numerous shoals of minnows and other small fry 

 to get a tenable bite upon it. Occasionally a 

 good-sized sucker makes a "glorious nibble," 

 and holds on to it till it appears a considerable 

 distance above the water, when whap! plumb it 

 tumbles down again, and vanishing affrighted 

 below the surface, leaves nothing very notable 

 behind it, but a dashing splash and momentary 

 ripple. While fragmentary remains of this un- 

 wieldy bait still tantalize the hungry voracity of 

 the small fry below the opaque surface of this 

 mystic river, the fragmeutal dash of impurity in 

 Italian bess on shore, in a similar manner still 

 baffles the hungry imagination of every theoretic 

 apiarian. 



Various, and to all appearance, very plausible 

 theories have repeatedly been presented to ex- 

 plain the origin of this objectionable dash, and 

 inasmuch as in these dashing latter days, dash- 

 ing objections are levelled against the well-estab- 

 lished Dzierzon theory, I feel constrained also to 

 dash down my views upon this interesting sub- 

 ject, not so much with the intention to instruct 

 the reader as to show him that, like the good- 

 sized sucker above alluded to, I have a pretty 

 good hold upon the bait and expect to be luiuled 

 above water, not caring whether I will tumble 

 down again or not, for an ablution now and then 

 hurts nobody. If I should be doomed to sink, 

 may my body rest in peace Avith Dzierzon, 



Takiug Dzierzon's whole theory of reproduc- 

 tion in bees, as deduced from the hypothesis that 

 iti copulation the ovaries of the queen are notfe- 

 cundaied, to be correct, it must be easily per- 

 eeiv^ed that all the eggs in both sections of the 

 ovarium remains drone eggs before they glide 

 past the .mouth of the spermatheca filled Avith 

 the drone's semen. The question now naturally 

 arises: How, then, if all the eggs must glide past 

 the mouth of the spermatheca, does it happen 

 that some eggs develope into drones, some into 

 ■workers, and some into queens? 



Dzierzon, indeed, tells us that the queen has 

 it in her power to deposite an egg just as it comes 

 trom tlie ovary, as drone-laying mothers lay it, 

 or by the action of the spermatheca past which 

 it must glide, to invest it with a Jiigher jwtency 

 of fertility, «fcc., and that she does so instinctive- 

 ly, induced by the width of the cell to be furnished. 

 But he does not attempt to say how this is d'^ne. 

 Tlie link is wanting here, and tlie difficulfy of 

 knowing Jtotc this is done, does not, I think, re- 

 quire us to ran.-;ack nature for analogy to solve 

 the (HfRculty to supply this link. No, ^Ir. Edi- 

 tor, how ingenious jNIr. Wagner's theory upon 

 the subject may at first appear to the majority of 

 readers, it is open to two very serious objections 



First, It directly contravenes proposition third 

 of Dzierzon's theory, as set forth in tlie cele- 

 brated Api-itical Letters of the Baron of Ber- 

 lepsch, Avhich dellnitely stales that "the queen 

 possesses the ability to lay male or female eggs 

 at idea sure, ni^ iha particular cell she is at any 

 time supplying may require." Second, It leaves 

 unexplained tlie well-known fact that the queen 

 does lay eggs in cells not more than one-eighth 

 of an inch high, when and where, of course, no 

 involuntary compression can take place. 



Viewed from the standpoint of the first objec- 

 tion, it denies voluntability to the queen; where- 

 as, viewed from the standpoint of the second ob- 

 jection, this voluntability the queen visibly in- 

 sects upon. The fact that Mr. Quinby comes to 

 the assistance with his "-may 6e," that, just at 

 the moment of the passage of the egg, or the act 

 of lajang, the contents of the abdomen are crowd- 

 ed downward, and it enlarges sufficiently to 

 touch the sides of a cell only one-eighth of an 

 inch deep, only cssts the will of the queen upon 

 contingencies; whereas, these prove only the ex- 

 ception to the general rule of the queen's manner 

 of ovipositing. As if aware of the insuflicicncy 

 of his supposition, Mr. Quinby advances an ar- 

 gument of his own, which, instead of throwing 

 light upon Mr. Wagner's theory, only throws 

 the veil of lurid offuscation around his argument, 

 lie adds: "When I first saw the smallest queen 

 that I ever raised, ichose body was even smaller 

 than a worker'' s, it occurred to me at once that 

 if she ever laid, it would be a test of the princi- 

 ple. Her body being small, it could not, of 

 course, be compressed like others, and a large 

 portion of her progeny would prove to be drones 

 in worker cells. The result was just what I ex- 

 pected — one-half icere drones.'''' And here, Mr. 

 Editor, with due deference to Mr. Wagner's 

 theory and Mr. Quinby's writings, permit me 

 to state that, in my opinion, if there ever was 

 such a queen, not only //«/but all, her progeny 

 vmst'hace been drones in worker cells, since "the 

 terminal ]ioint of the drone's abdomen is inserted 

 in the sheath of the queen's vagina before the 

 extrusion and inversion occur — thus affording the 

 terminal section with its horns, the middle sec- 

 tion, and the bulb containing the spermatophore, 

 time to assume their proper relative position 

 within the cavity of the vagina," it were, I 

 should think, altogether impossible that the male 

 genetalia, if they could pass the external orifice 

 of a queen even smaller than a worker, should 

 find room to intrude and-invert in the vagina of 

 such a diminutive queen. Now, if reasoning in 

 the language of men, whose reputation for learn- 

 ing and skill in entomotomistical demonstrations 

 is unquestioned, be not purposely sophistic, I 

 would like to be told wdiere the test t.) establish 

 this principle of involuntaiy compression in the 

 empiric statement of Mr. Quinby is to be looked 

 for. 



Nor is it necessary to entertain Mr. Harbison's 

 incongruous views in explaining the impregna- 

 tion or rather fertilization of the queen's eggs. 

 Mr. Harbison, it is true, admits that the queen 

 exercises certain knowledge, will, or understand- 

 ing in her manner of depositing eggs. But, in- 

 stead of endeavoring to give birth to an entirely 

 new and uuolyectionablc theory, by murdering 



