124 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



bach, for the masses of bee colonies as well as 

 their judicious arrangement, so favorable to ob- 

 servations of every kind, surpassed all my ex- 

 pectations. I found a lumdred and four Dzier- 

 zon hives overflowing with honey and bees, 

 destined for hybernation, and indeed distributed 

 in various ways in eight places in a spacious or- 

 chard, amongst which I was particular!}^ sur- 

 prised at the pavilion containing twenty-eight 

 , bee-hives, already frequently referred to in the 

 t Bienen?.eitung. The distance of these eight bee 

 f establishments from each other was never more 

 than forty feet Rhenish. Amongst these hives 

 there were nine genuine Italian colonies of bees, 

 tlie number of which might have been much 

 greater, if, as Herr von Ber-lepsch stated, seventy 

 Italian mothers had not been furnished by him 

 to other bee-keepers, and the hives generally 

 were considerably reduced by the various scien- 

 tific experiments. What has been of particular 

 service to Von Berlepsch in his bee-keeping, is 

 the assistance of his servant Gunther, who being 

 endowed with excellent talents, has been in- 

 structed by Berlepsch himself in the mystery of 

 bee-keeping, and has approved himself in a dis- 

 tinguished manner. 



I immediately set to work and examined a 

 great number of female eggs, with which the 

 great bee establishment of Herr von Berlepsch 

 still furnished me in large quantities. It first 

 occurred to me to make myself well acciuainted 

 with the organization of the eggs of bees, so as 

 not to be exposed to delusions or errors subse- 

 quently in seeking for the si^ermatozoids. It 

 was only after I had actually ascertained the 

 structure of the egg envelopes, the micropylar 

 apparatus, and the yelk, and practiced myself in 

 the preparation of the eggs of bees, that I turned 

 my attention to the spermatozoids, by whose 

 presence or absence the principal decision was 

 to be given. Above all the most exact acquaint- 

 ance was required with the individual ridges of 

 the lattice a\ ork of the egg-shell, Avhich is com- 

 posed of irregular hexagons, as well as with the 

 folds of the vitelline membrane accidentally pro- 

 duced during examination, so as not to confound 

 these things with spermatozoids which had be- 

 come motionless. 



After I had in this way made myself suflBcient- 

 ly familiar with the examination of the eggs of 

 bees, I had a comb brought to me at ten o'clock 

 jn the morning of the 22d of August, containing 

 female eggs which had been deposited at the ut- 

 most an hour before. I might expect before- 

 hand that no trace of spermatozoids would be 

 recognizable externally on these eggs. I there- 

 fore directed all my attention to their contents, 

 and hoped to discover the spermatozoids which 

 had already penetrated through the riiicropyle in 

 p the interioir of the eggs. I soon convinced my- 

 self that there was no possibility of discovering 

 the delicate seminal filaments between the gran- 

 ulovesicular yelk masses. The linear object to 

 be sought for was too subtle to be capable of dis- 

 covery with certainty amongst the many mu- 

 tually crossing outlines of the yelk vesicles. 

 After various vain endeavors to render the inte- 

 rior of the bee's egg accessible to the inquiring 

 eye, I came at last to the idea of employing an 

 artifice, which I soon had acquired by practice. 



and which allowed me to survey at least a portion 

 of the inner space of the bee's eggs with great 

 clearness and tranqnilily. I crushed a bee's egg 

 quite gently with a very thin glass plate in such 

 a manner that it was ruptured at its Uicer pole 

 opposite the micropylar apparatus, and the yelk 

 gradually flowed out at this spot, by which pro- 

 cess a clear empty sjjace Avas produced at the 

 upper pole within tlie micropylar apparatus, be- 

 tween the egg envelopes and the yelk, Avhich was 

 retiring dowuwards. I directed my attention 

 very particularly to this empty space, which I 

 saw slowly produced under the microscope during 

 the effusion of the j^elk. The production of such 

 a preparation, of course was not always success- 

 ful, tor sometimes the yelk flowed out of the 

 ruptured envelopes withcut the production of 

 this empty space; the yelk also sometimes re- 

 mained diffused in the upper part and allowed 

 no certain judgment as to the presence or ab- 

 sence of seminal filaments. An error rrx the 

 crushing of the agg^ a little too much pressure 

 upon it, or perhaps also a peculiar less tenacious 

 consistency of the yelk, probably caused the con- 

 tents of the yelk to retire in evefy direction from 

 the pressure, and therefore also to press upwards 

 against the micropylar apparatus. 



From the above-mentioned comb I examined 

 ten eggs, which I succeeded in transferring, 

 uninjured from their cells, upon an object glass, 

 which, from the delicacy of tliese eggs, is al- 

 waj^s a matter of difliculty. The result of their 

 microscopic examination was as follows: 



The first female egg exhihited nothing re- 

 markable. In the interior of the second egg to 

 my great delight, I observed three distinct but 

 motionless seminal filaments within the empty 

 space which had been produced at the superior 

 pole of tbe egg by the ffowiug out of the yelk 

 through the inferior pole. In a third egg after 

 the retirement of the 3'elk, I saw in the superior 

 space of the egg which had become empty, a 

 single motionless seminal filament. In a fourth 

 Qgg I again observed three motionless seminal 

 filaments at the same spot. A fifth egg pre- 

 pared in the same way, exhibited no seminal 

 filaments. A sixth and seventh had probably 

 been too strongly squeezed in their preparation; 

 the necessary empty space could not be pro- 

 duced in the interior of the egg at its superior 

 pole, for which reason I regarded these prepa- 

 rations as of no use for investigation. In an 

 eighth and ninth egg successfully prepared, I 

 again saw a single motionless filament in the 

 superior empty space of the cavity of the egg. 

 In the tenth egg the preparation was quite un- 

 successful. This comh, with female eggs, after 

 being carefully preserved in a room, was made 

 use of for the continuation of these investiga- 

 tions at eight o'clock in the morning of the 23d 

 of August. An eleventh egg was spoiled during 

 preparation, as also a twelfth. A thirteenth 

 egg was in an extremely interesting condition. 

 Alter it had been twenty-two hours out of the 

 bee-hive and had been successfully prepared in 

 the way above described, it exhibited two sper- 

 matozoids in the clear empty space between the 

 egg membranes and the 3'elk, which had r*^- 

 til'ed on the crushing of the egg. One of the 

 seminal filaments performed very lively tortuous 



