2 INTRODUCTION. 



circumstance, which distinguishes the oviposition of the Bees, has 

 also been the cause that, from time immemorial, the Apiarians have 

 been disputing about the signification of almost every individual 

 step in the process of reproduction in the Bees. This contest 

 has continued even to the present day, and it is scarcely possible 

 to imagine a single absurdity with regard to the history of the 

 reproduction of the Bees, which has not already been expressed 

 in sober earnest by some Apiarian, and is not to be read in print 

 in one of the innumerable Bee-books. The greatest confusion 

 especially was caused by the circumstance, that people could 

 not agree with regard to the sexes of the Bees; the Drones 

 were regarded as females and the Queens as males ; sometimes 

 it was supposed that the Workers alone had the care of the 

 oviposition ; sometimes the true act of copulation between the 

 drones and the queen was supposed only to take place in the 

 interior of the hive ; the wedding-flight of the queen would then 

 only be a sort of purification ; whilst from another side it was 

 asserted that the act of copulation was never performed in the 

 hive, but always high up in the air during the wedding-flight. 

 The act of coition was also entirely denied, the queen becoming 

 fertilized by the mere agitation of her body during the wedding- 

 flight. I could fill many pages here with these contradictions, 

 which are deposited in the annals of the history of Bee-life, and 

 by which the study of this otherwise so interesting subject from 

 books, has been stunted into a most ungrateful task. 



This endless dispute about the reproduction of the Bees, 

 often carried on with great animosity, in which the opponents of 

 the different theories of generation relating to the Bees often 

 showed themselves to be mere dilettanti, miserably furnished 

 with natural-history information, was not fitted to attract the 

 interest of physiologists ; indeed, it appeared as if the Apiarians 

 wished to fight the battle out amongst themselves without 

 foreign assistance, for the contest was never brought within 

 the province of an earnest investigation of nature. Moreover, 

 the naturalists could not very easily take part in the dispute, 

 as they were mostly deficient in the practical knowledge of 

 the oeconomy of Bees, without which every attempt to settle 

 the matter must have turned out imperfect, and would have 

 been received with distrust by the obstinate Bee-masters, to 



