90 PARTHENOGENESIS 



queen, which he knew to be near her death, as her Bees had 

 been constantly constructing royal-cells since the end of June, 

 and the queen furnished these with eggs by which her loss 

 might be replaced. Berlepsch, however, had not permitted the 

 larvae in these cells to come to exclusion, and thus this aged 

 mother was still alive when I arrived at Seebach and inquired for 

 drone-eggs. A little while before, this queen had laid drone- 

 eggs, but Berlepsch had destroyed this drone-brood also, as being 

 useless. At last the workers had enough of it, and commenced 

 no more cells. Berlepsch's object in this case was to determine 

 how long the life of a queen might be prolonged artificially. 

 When I came to Seebach, this queen was still laying single 

 eggs. On the 21st of August Giinther received the charge to 

 feed the hive, No. 79, in the evening with fluid honey ; the next 

 evening (22nd of August) two combs with covered worker-brood, 

 and between the two an empty drone-comb, were suspended in 

 this hive. The following morning (23rd of August) there were 

 twenty-seven drone-eggs in this drone-comb, and about sixty 

 worker-eggs in open cells of the worker-combs. Berlepsch had 

 carefully ascertained previously that not a single egg was present 

 in the open cells of both the foreign worker-combs, when sus- 

 pended in the experimental hive. 



I examined these twenty-seven drone-eggs, which might have 

 been about twelve hours old, and which agreed perfectly both in 

 their appearance and organization with the female eggs, with the 

 same care and by the same method with which I had treated 

 the female eggs, and did not find one seminal filament in any 

 single egg, either externally or internally. I must also add, that 

 only the seventh, thirteenth and twenty- third eggs were unsuc- 

 cessfully prepared. In all the rest of these drone-eggs the yelk 

 retreated slowly and completely from the upper pole of the 

 egg-envelopes, after the bursting of the membranes ; the desired 

 empty clear space between the micropylar apparatus and the 

 retreating yelk was produced in the interior of these eggs, so 

 that if seminal filaments had been present in them, they cer- 

 tainly would not have escaped my searching and inquisitive eye. 

 In order to be quite satisfied as to this remarkable negative 

 result, and to obtain the full signification of it, several female 

 eggs of the same queen which had furnished these drone- eggs, 



