56 PARTHENOGENESIS 



observations were to be regarded as virgins ; he tore away 

 the apex of their abdomen, by which means he succeeded in 

 getting a sight of the seminal receptacle, which in a female Bee 

 is of the size of a pin's head. Dzierzon knew from experience, 

 that a fertilized Bee in the normal state contains a milk-white 

 seminal capsule, which when crushed gives issue to the milky 

 seminal fluid. He knew that the empty seminal capsule of a 

 newly excluded virgin queen is not milk-white, but limpid; and 

 he convinced himself that in those drone-bearing queens with 

 crippled wings the seminal receptacle was limpid and empty of 

 semen, and consequently in the same state as the seminal cap- 

 sule of a virgin queen. I have spoken with Dzierzon upon these 

 observations ; and as, from my own microscopical examination, 

 I was well acquainted with the state of the sexual organs of 

 virgin and fertilized queens, I was thus in a position to judge 

 quite safely, from the description which Dzierzon gave me of 

 his investigations, made without a microscope, that he had ac- 

 quired perfectly correct notions as to the difference in the con- 

 dition of the sexual organs of a virgin and fecundated female 

 Bee, and therefore could not well have deceived himself in this 

 respect*. 



Moreover, I felt myself the less inclined to doubt the correct- 

 ness of these observations of Dzierzon's just reported, as I could 

 not but remember that, according to my own observations, the 

 females of certain Psychidte lay unfertilized eggs which are also 

 developed, but, inversely, instead of males produce nothing but 

 females. Dzierzon, however, by other observations furnished 

 me with evidence in favour of his proposition, that drones alone 

 are always produced from unfertilized Bees' eggs when they are 

 developed, and that consequently, in order to obtain drone-brood, 

 it is not necessary that the queen-bee should fertilize the eggs 

 when laying them. As I have already mentioned (p. 39), it 

 happens now and then in a bee-hive, especially when it has lost 



* Berlepsch has also seen drone-production and crooked combs caused in 

 the same way in bee-hives which were inhabited by a queen with crippled 

 wings, which had consequently remained without copulation. See (in the 

 Bienenzeitung, 1855, No. 7. p. 75) the important and interesting letter addressed 

 to me by Berlepsch, in which he discusses the question, whether the drone- 

 eggs are fecundated. 



