60 PARTHENOGENESIS 



of my views as to the drone-productiveness of the workers still 

 had to be obtained. This proof, Baron von Berlepsch has since 

 furnished by dissecting a worker-bee which was laying drone- 

 eggs, and finding therein a small ovary with about eight pretty well 

 developed eggs, but no seminal receptacle*. He did not content 

 himself with this investigation of his ownf, but in order to make 

 the unbelieving Apiarians more inclined to accept the truth, he 

 also called in the assistance of an entomotomist. At the request of 

 Berlepsch, Leuckart of Giessen dissected at Seebach two workers 

 taken in the act of laying eggs, of which, unfortunately, one 

 individual, as Leuckart reported J, was no longer in good con- 

 dition ; but on the other hand, in the second individual he was 

 able to prepare the sexual apparatus with its different parts in 

 connexion, and to recognize the egg-laying Bee from its con- 

 struction at the first glance. On the right side he found six, 

 and on the left five, ovarian tubes, with single mature eggs. 

 The single oviduct, as Leuckart said, was without appendages. In 

 the first-mentioned egg-laying worker also, Leuckart could detect 

 no seminal receptacle, although this structure is still distinctly 

 recognizable in the queens, even when the other entrails are 

 almost entirely dissolved by decomposition. I must here recall 

 the fact that, as I have already mentioned (p. 57), the seminal 

 receptacle is not entirely wanting in the workers, but that it 

 remains undeveloped in them, and may be detected as a small 

 appendage to the oviduct by a close microscopical examination. 

 Leuckart overlooked this appendage in the egg-laying Bees 

 examined by him, but has convinced himself, as he himself 

 admits , by subsequent investigations, of the presence of the 

 rudimentary seminal receptacle in worker-bees. At any rate, 

 it appears from the investigations of Berlepsch and Leuckart, 

 that, in the egg-laying workers dissected by them, the seminal 

 receptacle was not present in the same degree of development as 



* See Bienenzeitung, 1855, p. 78. Huber also (see his Nouvelles Observ. 

 p. 192) dissected some of these egg-laying workers, and found in one indivi- 

 dual eleven, and in the other four, mature eggs. 



t That Herr von Berlepsch has acquired the art of dissecting a Bee, I 

 had the opportunity of convincing myself last summer with my own eyes, 

 during my visit to Seebach, which will be mentioned further on. 



I See Bienenzeitung, 1855, p. 203. 



Bienenzeitung , loc. cit. p. 211. 



