IN THE HONEY-BEE. 55 



That this drone-bearing queen had really remained a virgin was 

 proved by the dissection, which Leuckart undertook at the re- 

 quest of Berlepsch*. 



The true cause of such a drone-productiveness in a bee-hive, 

 however, could only be detected by an apiarian as acute and 

 endowed with such a distinguished power of observation as 

 Dzierzon, whilst up to this time the unfortunate occurrence of 

 an excess of drone-brood in a bee-hive has been quite differ- 

 ently and falsely understood by other Bee-keepers. They laid 

 no stress upon the fact that such a hive only contained drone- 

 brood, but they merely wondered that a hive governed by a queen 

 with crippled wings contained any brood at all ; and they en- 

 deavoured to explain this phenomenon by the supposition that 

 this unexpected brood could only be produced by a fertilized 

 queen. But as the queen from which this brood was derived 

 had been found to be crippled in the wings, they erred in respect 

 to the affair of copulation, and supposed that this crippled brood- 

 bearing queen was certainly fertilized, and that consequently the 

 act of copulation was effected by the queen-bee within the hive. 

 This erroneous conclusion of course brought in a number of 

 other errors with regard to the signification of the particular 

 Bee-individuals and their functions, by which a correct insight 

 into the process of reproduction in the Bees must always have 

 been disturbed. 



Dzierzon alone did not allow himself to be diverted from the 

 right path in his observations; he maintained that the female 

 Bee can only return fertilized to her hive after the performance 

 of her wedding-flight. He did not, however, content himself 

 with this matter of experience ; he went further in his rational 

 way of investigating Bee-life ; he examined more closely the 

 egg-laying and drone-bearing queens, which according to his 



* Leuckart found the state and contents of the seminal pouch of this queen 

 to be exactly of the same nature (see Bienenzeitung, 1855, p. 128) as I had 

 found in other virgin queens (see Germar's Zeitschrift fur die Entomol. 1843, 

 p. 374). The seminal receptacle in all these females never contained semen- 

 masses with their characteristic spermatozoids, but only a limpid fluid, desti- 

 tute of cells and granules, which is produced from the two appendicular glands 

 of the seminal capsule, and, as I suppose, serves the purpose of keeping the 

 semen transferred into the seminal capsule in a fresh state, and the spermato- 

 zoids active, and consequently capable of impregnation. 



