50 PARTHENOGENESIS 



tions, information upon which has also been given in the 

 Bienenzeitung*, are certainly sufficient evidence that the Bees 

 copulate outside the hive. 



A still more convincing proof of the occurrence of this act 

 of copulation in the open air is furnished by the appearance 

 and behaviour of the fertilized queen on her return from her 

 wedding-flight. The completion of the coitus of such a queen 

 may betray itself even externally ; not only does the external 

 orifice of the sexual apparatus, which was kept closed before 

 the wedding-flight, stand open, but the torn male copulative 

 organs remain sticking in the vagina, and partly protrude from 

 it. In order to determine with certainty from its nature what 

 this foreign body, which had often been detected f in the 

 vagina of a queen on her return from the wedding-flight, really 

 w T as, Baron von Berlepsch forwarded to me for careful exami- 

 nation, on the 21st July 1853, one of these queens, from the 

 gaping sexual orifice of which definitely formed parts pro- 

 truded %' The results with which the exact anatomical and 

 microscopical examination of this queen has furnished me, have 

 been given by me in the Bienenzeitung ^. By this analysis I 



* See Bienenzeitung, 1845, p. 38 ; 1852, p. 188 ; 1853, pp. 108 & 174. 



t Bienenzeitung, 1846, p. 95, and 1853, pp.43, 107 & 120. 



% The letter from Von Berlepsch, which accompanied this queen, contained, 

 amongst other things, the following notes : — " Uninterruptedly occupied in 

 clearing up the natural history of the Honey- Bee, that is to say, in bringing 

 it to final conclusions, I succeeded, to-day, in impaling upon a pin, a queen 

 which had flown out to copulate, just as she was about to re-enter the hive. 

 The signs of copulation stand far out. In taking the liberty of sending you 

 this carcase, I have to beg that you will have the kindness to settle by dissec- 

 tion, — 1, if any, and what, parts of the drone occur in the royal vulva; and 

 2, what is the condition of the seminal receptacle. If there be parts of the 

 drone in the vulva, people will at last admit that the drones are the males, 

 that the copulation takes place outside the hive, and that it is absurd to 

 describe the drones as abortions, and seek the males amongst the worker- 

 bees. Moreover, if you find the seminal receptacle filled with semen, Dzier- 

 zon's hypothesis, according to which the ovary is not fertilized but the 

 seminal receptacle filled with male drone-semen by copulation, is raised into 

 evidence.'* 



§ See Bienenzeitung, 1854, No. 20. p. 227, Zergliederung einer vom Begat- 

 tungsjluge heimgekehrten Bienenkonigin. Ein Sendschreiben an Herrn August 

 von Berlepscli in Seebach. I have at the same time made use of this letter to 

 explain to the Bee-keepers the anatomical conditions of the sexual organs of 



