54 PARTHENOGENESIS 



fertilized by the male semen, the affair appears of sufficient im- 

 portance to be weighed and examined from all sides with the 

 utmost care. I have taken the trouble upon myself and tested 

 Dzierzon's assertion with all the means at my command, by 

 which I have convinced myself in the following way of its 

 correctness. 



In the first place, I may appeal to the fact, that it is a general 

 occurrence amongst Insects, that the females, even when they 

 have not copulated, deposit their mature eggs without fecunda- 

 tion ; it is therefore nothing remarkable that a virgin queen 

 deposits eggs. But we must be astonished that these eggs, 

 although unfecundated, do not remain undeveloped ; nay, what 

 is more, that only drones, or male Bees, are produced from such 

 eggs. As to the truth of this phenomenon, plenty of observa- 

 tions are adduced by the Apiarians, of which I bring forward, 

 only as the most convincing example, the drone-productiveness 

 of a virgin queen with imperfect wings. Every observant and ex- 

 perienced Bee-keeper knows the ill consequences introduced by 

 a queen-bee which has been excluded with crippled wings, and 

 which has acquired the dominion of a bee-hive. She finds her- 

 self prevented from undertaking the wedding-flight, but follows 

 the impulse to oviposition, and supplies worker- cells and drone- 

 cells indiscriminately with unfecundated eggs; these arrive at 

 development, the larvae excluded from them are provided with 

 nourishment by the workers, they grow up, but all of the same 

 size and the same nature ; for they are all drone-larvae, of which 

 those which have grown in worker-cells cannot find room in 

 these, and therefore the workers elevate their narrow cells by 

 subsequent additions, so as to obtain room, and in this way pro- 

 duce misshapen combs, or combs with the so-called crooked brood 

 [Buckelbruf) . 



A very interesting experiment was made by Berlepsch in 

 order to confirm the drone-productiveness of a virgin queen. 

 He contrived the exclusion of queens at the end of September 

 1854, and therefore at a time when there were no longer any 

 males ; he was lucky enough to keep one of them through the 

 winter, and this produced drone-offspring on the 2nd of March 

 in the following year, furnishing 1500 cells with crooked brood*. 



* See Bieneazeitung, 1855, No. 7- p. 76. 



