330 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



lEREM 



CONDUCTED BY 

 JUGENHEIM:, HESSENi GERMANY. 



Apicultural Notes. 



Spermatic Animalcules in Bee- 

 Eggs. — Mr. Faylor believes, and it 

 snems that Prof. Cook does too, that 

 sperm-cells cannot be discovered in bee- 

 eggs with any kind of microscope. Prof, 

 von Siebold discovered sperm-cells in 

 bee-eggs about 40 years ago, and the 

 microscopes at that time were nbt the 

 very best ones. If Siebold had not dis- 

 covered them, there would not have 

 been a scientific sanction of the ideas of 

 Dzierzon up to now. Is that true ? No ! 

 it is a fact that the doctrine of Dzierzon 

 is acknowledged by everybody now-a- 

 days. 



Queen Laying Worker - Eggs in 

 Drone-Cells. — Rev. Faylor says in the 

 American Bee Journal, "If you want 

 drone-bees, give a good colony nothing 

 but drone-comb. All eggs layed in 

 drone-cells produce only drone-bees." 

 Pardon, but that's not correct. The 

 queen is more clever than many think 

 for ; she does not like too many drone- 

 bees, and if you give her nothing but 

 drone-comb, she will soon lay fertilized 

 eggs, notwithstanding the drone-cells ; 

 and it is strange that the worker-bees, 

 which come from them, are not a bit 

 larger than those fed up in worker-bee 

 cells. 



This experiment has already been 

 made in Germany, by Grunhagen, 

 Oerpke, and afterwards by the well- 

 known Vogel. 



Queen and Spermatic Cells. — The 

 queen is able to produce spermatic cells 

 herself. Mr. Metzger, at Budapesth, 

 has recently published a surprising re- 

 search about the seminal vessel {recepta- 

 culurn seminis) of the queen. Up to 

 now the microscopical researches of 

 Prof. Leuckart and Prof, von Siebold, 

 who, together with Berlepsch, first 

 proved Dzierzon's marvellous doctrine 

 of the Parthenogenesis to be right, have 

 been standard ; but now Metzger has 

 corrected part of these researches, 

 and added a highly interesting fact. He 

 says : 



"The statement of Prof. Leuckart, 

 that the seminal vesicle of the queen is 



large enough to accept millions of sper- 

 matic animalcules at once, is not cor- 

 rect — it is much too small for that, and 

 the spermatic animalcules cannot live 

 for three to five years in the seminal 

 vesicle of the queen, as is believed to- 

 day. The seminal vesicle is a ' gland.' 

 and has therefore secretions which con- 

 sist of an opalescing liquid containing 

 cells without nucleus. After the copu- 

 lation, all these cells have a nucleus, 

 and one can see the spermatic animal- 

 cules in all kinds of sizes, part of them 

 just leaving the cells. This is a proof 

 that the spermatic animalcules can be 

 increased in number by the queenherself. 

 If a queen is killed during spring-time, 

 when the seminal vesicle is ^lled with 

 spermatic animalcules, one can even see 

 that the spermatic animalcules are try- 

 ing to leave the cells even before the 

 cells have got rid of the mucous mem- 

 brane of the gland. During winter-time 

 there are only very few sperm animalcu- 

 les in the seminal vesicle, and still in 

 spring the queen is able to lay up to 

 3,000 eggs a day, and each egg wants 

 at least one sperm animalcule for ferti- 

 lization." 



This is quite a new view, and a good 

 many of the men of letters will be sur- 

 prised at this doctrine. Dzierzon thinks 

 favorably of it. He says that he some- 

 times has noticed that an Italian queen 

 mated to a German drone, in the third 

 year, did not produce any more hybrids, 

 but pure Italians. There was no state- 

 ment as to this curious fact up to now, 

 but the discovery of Metzger will attest 

 it. 



That's something for Prof. Cook ! 



H. Reepen. 



Xhe Sting: Xro-wel Theory is 



thus referred to by Prof. Wm. F. Clarke, 

 of the Ontario Bee-Keepers' College, at 

 Guelph, Ont., Canada: 



Permit me to say that "Whoever the 

 I may be " who figures in the English 

 journals mentioned on page 137 of your 

 issue of Feb. 2ud, is not r«.e, nor have I 

 any knowledge who it is. The quotation 

 is taken bodily from my "Bird's-Eyc 

 View ;" nor has the writer gone a step 

 farther than I, in assigning to the formic 

 acid (not the sting) the duty of flavoring 

 the honey. I believe that the bees, as 

 Cheshire happily phrases it, add "drop- 

 lets " of formic acid to the honey as 

 they store it, and smear some on the 

 cappings in the finishing touches which 

 they give them. Wm. F. Clarke. 



