IN THE HONEY-BEE. *J 5 



males only take after the mother." To this Von Berlepsch added 

 the following commentary in his letter: "An Italian queen fer- 

 tilized by a German drone, or a German queen by an Italian 

 drone, constantly (only one exception has occurred to me) pro- 

 duces fern ales (workers, queens) of three different colours : a. True 

 Italians, that is to say, as yellow and banded as the female de- 

 scendants of Italian queens, which were also fecundated by Italian 

 drones ; b. True Germans, and c. Mongrels. With many mothers, 

 the Italian, and with many the German descendants predominate; 

 but the mongrels, which, as regards colour, are intermediate be- 

 tween the Germans and Italians, are always in the minority, and 

 indeed in the greatest minority, for in many hives we rarely see 

 a mongrel, and in many none at all. Now as the queens are only 

 workers, otherwise, that is to say, further developed, the same 

 conditions occur in them also, and in hybrid mothers the colour 

 of the royal descendants depends upon the egg. If the egg 

 would have given a true Italian worker, it also furnishes a 

 genuine Italian queen, &c. The males without exception follow 

 the mother as regards colour, and during the last summer I was 

 unable to discover with hybrid mothers even a single male which 

 resembled its father, in spite of the most careful observation and 

 the closest examination." 



After such important empirical facts, derived from the obser- 

 vation of a great number of productions of hybrid Bees, it must 

 therefore be regarded as certain, that, in accordance with Dzier- 

 zon's theory, Bees of pure race are deprived of the power of pro- 

 ducing hybrid drones. 



Notwithstanding the experiments hitherto made in a practical 

 way, by which Dzierzon's theory has acquired the right of assert- 

 ing its justice, we cannot reject the demand that, by means of direct 

 experiments, we must acquire the conviction that the drone- eggs 

 require no fertilization for their development, whilst the same eggs, 

 in order to furnish female or worker-bees, must be fecundated ; 

 for it is only by such strict scientific proofs that this new theory 

 will acquire a firm and secure basis. 



Since the production of fishes by the artificial fecundation of 

 the eggs had been carried on of late years with such fortunate 

 results, it was natural to think whether it was not possible to 

 establish the correctness of Dzierzon's theory incontrovertibly 



