IN THE HONEY-BEE. 43 



with a higher degree, a higher potency of fertility, and awaken 

 in it the germ of a more perfect being, namely a queen or a 

 worker-bee. This of course she does instinctively, induced by 

 the width of the cell to be furnished/' — " For the production of 

 females in the bee-hive, therefore, more conditions and forces 

 are necessary than for the production of males or drones. Every 

 mother which is capable of producing worker-brood, can also 

 lay drone-eggs, but not inversely." 



As was to be expected, these views upon the reproduction of 

 Bees called forth the most lively contradictions amongst the Bee- 

 keepers ; they were attacked with the most violent polemics in 

 the Bee-journal above mentioned, at the same time however that 

 most of the opponents, being destitute of any knowledge of the 

 anatomical structure of Bees, and of any insight into the phy- 

 siological import of the sexual functions in Insects, laid them- 

 selves open so miserably, that it must have been an easy matter 

 for Dzierzon to silence them; but as it was almost entirely 

 dilettanti speaking to dilettanti, the dispute never came to an 

 end, the most incorrect, extraordinary and absurd assertions 

 upon the copulation, fecundation and oviposition of the Bees, &c. 

 being put forward in sober earnest as established truths, without 

 its being observed how completely such views, devised in the 

 fancy of a Bee-keeper, were destitute of anything like scientific 

 proof. Hence it was possible that, simultaneously with the 

 theory set up by Dzierzon, which its originator sought to sup- 

 port by important new evidence from time to time in the 

 Bienenzeitung, questions for investigation and reply were again 

 and again propounded in that Journal, upon which we must 

 have been long perfectly clear, since the most important points 

 in the reproduction of the Bees had been elucidated by Dzier- 

 zon's theory. 



Thus in the different years of the Bienenzeitung up to the 

 most recent time, we may find the following questions put for- 

 ward as not satisfactorily answered, and the following points 

 referred to as doubtful by various Bee-keepers : namely, whether 

 the drones are really the male Bees ; whether the drones might 

 not have the care of the hatching of the eggs; whether the 

 drones are not truly abortions ; whether there are not also male 

 worker-bees; whether the queen is not perhaps fertilized by 



