74 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



On the Impregnation of the Eggs of the 

 Queen Bee. 



The readers of the American Bee Jounxal 

 •will probably be surprised to learn that the true 

 office of the spermatheca in at least one insect, 

 was known nearly two hundred years ago. M. 

 Debeauvoys, in his Guide de L'Apiculteur, 6th 

 edition, Paris, 1863, page 301, says: "In 1630" 

 (date should be 1669) "Malpighi tigured and 

 described in the female moth of the silk worm 

 the organs of generation with such precision 

 that modern works give nothing new on the 

 subject." 



In volume 2d, of Malpighi's works, which 

 were published at Leyden, in 1683, is a treatise 

 on the silk worm, dedicated to the London 

 Ro3'al Society. In this treatise, which is won- 

 derfully accurate and minute, the external and 

 internal organs of the larva and male and fe- 

 male moth are very fully figured and described. 



Plate 12 contains, on a highly magnified scale, 

 a drawing of the ovaries and spermatheca (or 

 as he calls it, icterus^) of the female moth, with 

 their adjacent parts. 



On page 40, he says, (I abridge his minute 

 description, ) that he found a vessel opening into 

 the oviduct, which he believed to be the recep- 

 tacle for the male sperm, and from the contents 

 of which the eggs were impregnated as they 

 passed from the ovaries. 



Taking some eggs from the ovaries of an un- 

 impregnated moth, he found that all which 

 were above the spermatheca remained of the sul- 

 plmr color which characterises unfecundated 

 eggs, while those which were taken from the 

 oviduct beloic the spermatheca, assumed the 

 violet hue, which is the proper color of imjireg- 

 nated eggs. 



To make the demonstration of the proper 

 office of the spermatheca more complete, he at- 

 tempted to fecundate artifieiallj' the eggs taken 

 from the ovaries, eitlier by applying to them the 

 contents of tlie spermatheca, or the sperm taken 

 from the male moth. This experiment failed 

 because lie seems to have been ignorant of the 

 fact that the eggs, when exposed to the air, be- 

 came too dry to admit of impregnation.* Mal- 

 piglii, having failed in what he thought, if suc- 

 cessful, would have been a most happy experi- 

 ment, {maxima experieiMi felicitas) commit- 

 ted to the members of the Royal Society the 

 further elucidation of this subject. One of 

 them, as will soon appear, completed the ex- 

 periment by artificially impregnating the eggs 

 of a virgin moth at the moment they were ex- 

 truded by her. This author by making no men- 

 tion of Malpighi in his minute account of his 

 own experiments, failed to give to his able pre- 

 decessor that credit to which he was so emi- 

 nently entitled. '■^Sttum cuique^^'' "his own to 

 each" should br a sacred motto to all observers 

 and inventors. 



*Iu lSo2, as described in my worl: on bees, edition of 1S.")7, 

 I laade an attempt lo fecundate artificially some eg^'s laid by 

 a queen bee iu drouu colls, and failed from the same cause. 

 Some years afterwards this was successfully done by Pon- 

 tolV iu Gerroany. 



Swammerdam, in his great work, Biblia Na- 

 turce, Leyden, 1737, described very minutely 

 and accurately the generative organs of the drone 

 and queen bees, giving a highly magnified 

 drawing of the ovaries of the queen, with their 

 dependent organs. If he had only thought of 

 applying his microscope to the contents of the 

 spermatheca, which organ he had so beautifully 

 depicted, he would have been spared his vain 

 attempts to prove that the eggs of the queen 

 bee were fecundated by a seminal atmosphere, 

 (aura seminalis), to produce whicli he thought 

 required the large number of drones usually 

 found in a hive. 



Bazin, (see Debeauvoys, page 304,) who in 

 1740 had the charge of communicating to the 

 public some profound observations of Reaumur, 

 referring to Malpighi, was certain that the fe- 

 cundation of the eggs of the queen bee was 

 accomplished in the same way with those of the 

 silk moth, by being bedewed with the sperm 

 which was lodged in the sperm reservoir. It 

 seems strange to us, with our present knowl- 

 edge, how such demonstrable matters, so im- 

 portant in their practical relations, could have 

 been so long overloolicd, not only by beekeep- 

 ers, but by the most scientific entomologists. 



Arthur Dobbs, in a letter published in the 

 Transactions of the Philosophical Society for 

 1750, vol. 4, p. 536, seems to have been tlie next 

 person to suggest that the c^ueen had a perma- 

 nent seminal receptacle. On page 548 he says: 

 "There are two vessels described by Swammer- 

 dam in the mother bee, whose plate M. Reau- 

 mur has given in liis Memoirs, one of which is 

 placed betwixt the two lobes of the ovarium, 

 which he supposes to be a bladder to contain 

 air; the other is a special vessel seated close by 

 the common duct in which tlie eggs fall from 

 the lobes of the ovarium, which he supposes to 

 ooze out a juice to moisten the eggs in their pas- 

 sage. I take one of these, but most' probably 

 the last, to be the reservoir and repository of 

 the male sperm wherein it is lodged in the act 

 of coition, until the eggs are enlarged and pass 

 through the adjoining duct from the two lobes 

 of the ovarium." 



The celebrated John Hunter gives a highly 

 interesting explanation of the way in which the 

 eggs of the queen bee are impregnated from the 

 contents of the spermatheca. It may be found 

 in an article entitled "Observation on Bees, 

 by John Hunter, Esq., F. R. S., Read Feb. 23, 

 1792;" see volume 82 of the Transactions of the 

 Philosophical Society, pages 128-195. 



The following extract from Professor Sie- 

 bold's work, "Parthenogenesis," shows that 

 at the time of the publication of that work 

 he could not liave read either Malpigi, Bazin, 

 Dobbs, or this article of Hunter's. 



"Although the representation of the male 

 and female sexual organs of the bees have been 

 copied from Swammerdam's Biblia Natures by 

 various writers upon these insects, and con- 

 sequently the facts established anatomically 

 were communicated to the apiarians, yet for a 

 long time these truths could not boast of a recog- 

 nition by all bee keepers. These entomologic in- 

 vestigations probably did not appear sufficiently 



