INTRODUCTION. 



hive. Those who acknowledged the Queen as the female indi- 

 vidual of the Bees, and, in accordance with the physiological 

 laws hitherto current, ascribed to her the property of laying 

 eggs capable of development only after previous copulation and 

 the filling of the seminal receptacle with spermatozoids, were, 

 in consequence of the first-mentioned phenomenon, rendered 

 doubtful where and when the copulation of the Queen-Bee is 

 effected. From this arose the dispute, so abundantly battled 

 out in the books and journals relating to Bees, as to whether 

 the Queen copulates in or out of the hive. That the former was 

 possible was thought to be proved by the imperfect-winged 

 Queens laying eggs capable of development, and thus the two 

 sexes of Bees were supposed to perform the act of copulation in 

 the interior of the Bee-hive, although such a copulation in the 

 hive had never been seen. In this respect the Bees shared the 

 same fate with the Roes ; in these animals the practical game- 

 keeper could not comprehend why, after the single rutting time 

 (in August and September), the uterus of the Roe contained 

 no embryo, and therefore incorrectly ascribed a second rutting 

 time (in December) to the Roes, although no one had met with 

 Roes in copulation during that period. In those cases in which 

 the second remarkable phenomenon previously mentioned oc- 

 curred, namely, brood in a queenless Bee-hive, we should entirely 

 mistake the sexual functions of the Bees. Such observations 

 were principally employed in raising objections of insufficiency 

 and untenabilitv against the scientific endeavours at the determi- 

 nation of the sexes of Bees. 



In most Zoological or Entomological works we find all these 

 acrimonious controversies regarding Bee-life, either imperfectly 

 mentioned or scarcely indicated, and hence it may have hap- 

 pened, that the history of the reproduction of the Bees has 

 remained untouched by those physiologists who have specially 

 occupied themselves with the generation of animals*. On this 

 side no one had any idea what difficult problems are here pre- 

 sented to science for solution. Moreover the physiologists were 

 lately engaged by another very attractive but also very difficult 



* In the ample article upon Propagation (Zeugung) by 11. Leuckart (see 

 R. Wagner's Handwdrterbuch der Physiologie, Bd. iv. 1853), the remarkable 

 history of reproduction in the Bees is scarcely touched. 



