4 INTRODUCTION. 



sexual functions in a perfectly arbitrary and unnatural fashion, 

 according to their own individual and often very limited views. 



After I had, in the year 1837^ ascertained the existence and 

 signification of the seminal receptacle in female insects*, and in 

 1843 called attention to this reservoir of semen in the Queen- 

 Bees f, by the functions of which many phenomena in the repro- 

 ductive activity of the Bees, which had hitherto remained pro- 

 blematical, or had been incorrectly explained, might be properly 

 conceived, these investigations exerted no particular influence 

 upon the perverted views of most of the Apiarians. They pro- 

 bably paid no further attention to them, as theoretical stuff, and 

 yet, by the recognition of the function of the seminal receptacle, a 

 phenomenon in the Bee-hive, which had been a source of wonder 

 from time immemorial, could now be correctly explained. Thus, 

 it had been ascertained by me, that after copulation had taken 

 place, the semen of the drone, which filled the seminal receptacle 

 to overflowing, remained in this place, capable of impregnating 

 the eggs, not merely for months, but for years, as might be seen 

 from the movements of the spermatozoids of this semen con- 

 tinuing for that period J. This explains how a queen, fertilized 

 by a single coitus, after discharging her eggs in the first year, 

 may again, in the following year, and even still more frequently, 

 lay eggs capable of development, such as the hive requires, as 

 fertilizing semen is still constantly preserved in her seminal re- 

 ceptacle, to fecundate eggs even for so long a period. But even 

 this discovery w r as ignored by most of the Apiarians ; as a general 

 rule, fresh scruples as to the value of such anatomical and micro- 

 scopical investigations were constantly rising amongst them, with 

 respect to the determination of the sexual functions of the Bees. 



There were two phenomena especially in the oeconomy of the 

 Bees, which troubled the minds of the Apiarians with reference 

 to the division of the sexual functions in those insects, — I 

 mean, 1. the capability of an imperfect- winged female to pro- 

 duce brood, and 2. the production of brood in a queenless 



* See my Observations upon the Spermatozoa in fecundated female Insects, 

 in Miiller's Archiv, 1837, p. 417. 



f Ueber das Receptaculum seminis der Hymenopteren- Weibchen, in Germar's 

 Zeitschrift fur die Entomologie, Bd. iv. 1843, p. 371. 



X See Germar's Zeitschr. loc. cit. p. 374 (with regard to Apis mellifica), 

 and Wiegmann's Archiv, 1839, i. p. 107 {Vespa rufa). 



