IN THE HONEY-BEE. 73 



some such disturbing accident appears from his own statement, 

 which I will give here literally, in order to show that Dzierzon 

 is not one of those who cannot be led away from a preconceived 

 opinion, whether it be right or wrong. His words* are as follow : 

 " Continued observations of the hybrid hives also must be no 

 less adapted to raise the veil more and more, to penetrate into 

 the obscurity and finally bring the mysterious truth to light. If 

 the drone-egg does not require fertilization, Italian mothers must 

 always produce Italian drones, and German mothers German 

 drones, even when they have been fertilized by drones of the 

 other race. The Silesian Apiarian (Bienenfreund] possesses 

 hybrid hives of both kinds, and did not permit any want of ob- 

 servations so far as the limited time enabled him to make them, 

 but he met with new unsolvable riddles. The Italian hybrid- 

 mothers have throughout completely confirmed the supposition 

 and produced the most beautiful Italian drones, one almost more 

 beautiful than the genuine stocks, the maternal stock itself. Of 

 two German hybrid hives, one also produced only the ordinary 

 black drones ; the other the same, but unexpectedly amongst 

 these a few appeared which glittered like gold, and were yellower 

 than any single bee even in the genuine Italian hives. It cer- 

 tainly was possible that even here a beautiful Italian amongst the 

 workers, of which a portion had the colour of the indigenous Bees, 

 and another portion that of the Italians, might have laid some 

 eggs, from which the few yellow drones might have been pro- 

 duced. Nevertheless the Silesian Apiarian is not particularly 

 inclined to explain the phenomenon in this way, so as not to ex- 

 pose himself to the suspicion that only a predilection for his hy- 

 pothesis led him to have recourse to this explanation, as in point 

 of fact the deposition of eggs by worker-bees when a queen is 

 present, is an exceptional occurrence of the rarest kind. Although 

 the vesicle filled with semen does not implant the vital germ for 

 the drone in the egg, may not a peculiar emanation from it never- 

 theless act in determining the kind and colour ? w 



Dzierzon is certainly in the wrong, when, for the sake of this 



one observation which disturbs him, and in order to explain 



it, he again calls in the aid of the long-overthrown hypothesis of 



the action of an aura seminalis. Von Berlepsch has taken the 



* See the Bienenfreund aus Schlesien, No. 8, 1854, p. 63. 



