254 Dr. F. Plateau on the Production of the Sexes in Bees. 



deceives himself in ascribing the production of males to in- 

 = sufficiency of nourishment ; but would not the intimate com- 

 position of this nourishment have an influence? Given a 

 very young worker-larva, the genital organs of which may 

 equally become male or female, as is indicated by the herma- 

 phrodite bees, since a special nourishment may make of it a 

 queen, according to Schirach* and the bee-keepers, one is led 

 to assume, until incontestable evidence to the contrary is ob- 

 tained, that the food may also force the male reproductive 

 organs, which exist in a latent state, to become developed to 

 the exclusion of the others. 



Would not the form of the cells also play its part ? for it is 

 certainly not without motive that the lids of the male cells are 

 convex. 



Permit me to add a few words with regard to the very 

 recent investigations of MM. Sanson and Bastian, which, far 

 from invalidating those of M. Landois as those authors think, 

 only serve to confirm them, in my opinion. 



MM. Sanson and Bastian f cut away from a male cell the 

 bottom part which bears the Q^g^ remove the bottom of a 

 worker-cell, and substitute for it the preceding piece, which 

 they fix by passing a hot needle along its margins. 



Like M. Landois and M. Bessels, who have made analogous 

 experiments, MM. Sanson and Bastian remove the queen, so 

 as to avoid mistaking for the eggs which they have placed 

 artificially others subsequently laid by the female. 



The ninety-three male eggs introduced by the method just 

 described were regularly expelled by the workers, from which 

 MM. Sanson and Bastian conclude that the experiments of 

 M. Landois are erroneous. 



But we may remark that the process employed by this last- 

 mentioned observer is entirely different. Knowing well that 

 the worker-bees promptly cleanse the cells of all foreign 

 bodies, he carefully avoided mutilating the cells after the 

 fashion of MM. Sanson and Bastian, whose handiwork, which 

 would certainly be very coarse for bees, would be immediately 

 recognized by them. He delicately removed the Q^g with a very 

 small fragment of wax, and stuck it into the interior of the 

 new cell, by means of this little fragment, in the most natural 

 position possible. Under these conditions the author saw the 

 eggs of workers transported into male-cells give birth to 

 drones. 



MM. Sanson and Bastian introduced into an artificial hive, 



* Histoire Naturelle de la Reine des Abeilles. Trad. Blassiere, 1771, 

 p. 45. 



t Coinptes Rendus, torn. Ixvii. p. 51. 



