62 PARTHENOGENESIS 



From the circumstances hitherto described it will be evident, 

 how a queen which has not been fertilized, or an old queen or 

 egg-laying worker, must act injuriously upon a colony of Bees ; 

 they constantly cause confusion in a bee-hive, as they only 

 produce lazy drones, and cannot, by the production of new 

 workers, replace the loss of workers, to which every bee-hive is 

 exposed. On the other hand, a colony of Bees which rejoices in 

 the possession of a vigorous, fertilized queen will thrive well, as the 

 drones, the workers, and the queens required for the emigration 

 of young swarms, are produced by her at the right time, and in 

 the proper proportions as to number, for which purpose the 

 workers prepare and arrange the necessary drone-cells, worker- 

 cells, and queen-cells. 



Dzierzon's theory also includes the assertion that every nor- 

 mally organized and fertilized queen must at the same time 

 possess the power of laying male or female eggs at will, that is 

 to say, of leaving an egg unfertilized, or depositing it fecundated 

 at will, when engaged in laying her eggs. 



The answer to the question, how a queen can know when she 

 has to lay a male or female egg, will be, that instinct will tell 

 her, and truly, at the moment when she pushes her abdomen 

 into a wide drone-cell, or the narrow cell of a worker, for the 

 purpose of laying an egg. The distinction of the wider and 

 narrower cells will certainly be felt out by a normal queen with 

 her abdomen, and by this sensation she will know, that she 

 must fertilize the egg to be deposited in a narrow cell, whilst 

 she has to lay down the egg without fecundation in a wide one. 

 By the peculiar texture of an incomplete royal-cell too, a normal 

 queen will be instinctively induced to fertilize the egg to be 

 deposited in it. By this means Dzierzon might have explained 

 that phenomenon in the bee-hive which has always excited 

 astonishment as a wonderful mystery, namely, that faculty 

 possessed by the normal queen of furnishing the drone-cells, 

 worker- cells, and queen-cells of the combs, which are arranged in 

 different number and order in every bee-hive, with the right eggs. 

 It would certainly still remain to be proved, from the organi- 

 zation and arrangement of the separate sections of the female 

 sexual organs, that it really was possible for a fertilized queen, 

 by the presence of decidedly voluntary muscles, to retain the 



