AMERICAN BEE JOURiNAL. 



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



AT TWO DOLLARS PEK ANNUM, PAYABLE IN ADVANCE. 



Vol. VII. 



JA.TVXJA.K,Y, IS'TS. 



No. 7. 



Non-hatching Bee £ggs. 



Translated for the American Bee Journal, from the 

 " Bienenzeituu^." 



Since I first stated, in my essay on alternation 

 of generation, in ^'■Parthenogenesis in Insects'" 

 (1858, page 62), the fact, based on an observa- 

 tion made by Mr. Hncke, tliat there are queen 

 bees whose eggs, thougli regularly broodecl, fail 

 to hatch, the number of such instances noticed 

 by others has become so multiplied that the 

 Baron of Berlepsch — who once, in confident 

 conviction to the contrary, boldly offered to give 

 twenty of his finest Dzievzon hives stocked with 

 Italian bees, for one such queen — has felt him- 

 self constrained to devote a special paragraph to 

 these "addle eggs," in the new edition of his 

 celebrated work on Bees and Bee-culture (1805, 

 page 86). 



In accordance with previous observers, Ber- 

 lepsch infers, from the absence of brood, that 

 the eggs are in reality addle. He assumes that 

 they remain entirely without any advance to- 

 wards development, though brooded ; and looks 

 for the cause of this in the defective constitution 

 of the mother, in consequence of which she has 

 lost, either wholly or partially, the ability to 

 produce eggs having the germ of vitality. Of 

 the same opinion is Professor Von Siebold, as is 

 shown in a communication from him in a late 

 number of the Bienenzeitung (1871, page 171), 

 wherein he speaks of the addle condition of bee 

 eggs, though he was unable to detect anything 

 abnormal either in the queen sent to him, or in 

 her eggs. 



I confess that I coincided in this view respect- 

 ing the nature of the eggs in the instance re- 

 ferred to, till the autumn of 1868, when I had 

 opportunities in rapid succession to investigate 

 three cases of so-called addleness, and then found 

 reason to change my opinion. 



The first of these cases occurred in the apiary 

 of Mr. Dorr, in Mettenheim. On the 23d of 

 September, I received from him the following 

 communication respecting it: — "For two months 

 past I have been watching the oviposition of a 

 queen bred this year, continually finding eggs 

 in the cells, but never any larvse, sealed or un- 

 sealed. Three weeks ago I examined t!ie hive, 

 and found, as I had found four weeks before 



eggs, and eggs only. Inferring thence that a 

 change of queen had taken place, I regarded 

 these eggs as the first batch laitl by the new 

 queen. Since then, three weeks more have 

 elapsed to-day, yet I found no trace whatever of 

 brood ; but, as before, eggs only. Under these 

 circumstances the population of the hive having 

 become much reduced, the area of oviposition is 

 no longer large, yet I find in each cell in this 

 area several eggs, and in some instances as many 

 as five.* But 1 can readily see that always one 

 of these eggs has been recently laid, because the 

 larger number have already, by drying up, be- 

 come shrivelled or shrunken — some being, as it 

 were, mere shells. I would particularly request 

 attention to the fact that oviposition appears to 

 have proceeded regularly, for there always was 

 one freshly laid egg in every such cell. — On the 

 whole, I cannot account for the facts thus ob- 

 served except on the assumption that this queen 

 lays addle eggs only. " 



Mr. Dorr's kind offer to send me the queen 

 and eggs for examination, was of course thank- 

 fully accepted ; and I very soon received both, 

 with an additional note from him, in which he 

 stated that the queen was hatched on the 12th 

 of July, when drones were plenty ; and that she 

 had been laying since the beginning of August, 

 though no being, endowed with vitality, had ever 

 issued from any of her eggs. 



I found the queen, both externally and inter- 

 nally, perfectly normal and well-shaped. The 

 ovaries and oviducts were richly stored with eggs 

 in various stages of advancing maturity — those 

 organs being still well developed for so late a 

 period in the season. As in the case also, men- 

 tioned by Prof. Siebold, fertilization had taken 

 place, and the spermatheca contained a dense 

 mass of still mobile spematozoid^. Their dis- 

 section furnished nothing that threw any light 

 on the subject ; biit the matter assumed a dif- 

 ferent aspect when I subjected the eggs them- 

 selves to investigation. 



Even the first egg placed under the microscope, 

 though still fresh and of the usual appearance, 

 satisfied me that the assumption that these eggs 

 were addle, was altogether unfounded. Instead 

 of an amorphous yolk, it contained a peifectly 

 formed embryo, with the usual external and in- 



* In several of the cells of the comb sent to me, I found even 

 seven or eight eggs. — Note, by Prof. Leuckart, 



