64 PARTHENOGENESIS 



whole receptacle sideways from the tube of the oviduct into 

 which it opens, so that those eggs which she wishes to deposit 

 in male cells may glide past untouched by the semen/' 



The power of a fertilized queen to lay male or female eggs 

 at pleasure, may also be proved by the following experiment. In 

 a Dzierzon hive we may, to a certain extent, compel a fertilized 

 queen to lay male or female eggs. The construction of one of 

 these hives permits the nature of the combs prepared in it by 

 the workers to be closely inspected : if the workers of a hive 

 furnished with a normal queen prepare too many drone-cells, 

 which we may perhaps not wish to have, or if the hive requires 

 more workers, we may remove the drone-combs, whose cells the 

 queen would have shortly supplied with male, that is to say, 

 unfertilized eggs, and instead of these suspend combs with empty 

 worker-cells ; the queen will furnish these combs also with eggs, 

 and indeed, to correspond with the nature of the cells, with 

 female or fertilized eggs, from which the workers may rear their 

 like. In the summer we may induce the queens of populous 

 hives to lay drone-eggs, if we suspend an empty drone-comb in 

 the midst of the hive. From this it follows that the intelligent 

 Bee-keeper has it in his own hands in what direction he will 

 turn the activity of this or that colony of Bees, and that by 

 suitable assistance he may prevent the disorganization and de- 

 moralization of a bee-hive. 



Before I turn to the strictly scientific proofs which I have 

 still to furnish, in order to give permanence to the view upon 

 the reproduction of the Bees put forward by Dzierzon only as 

 a hypothesis, and raise it to the rank of a theory, so that it 

 may take its proper place in the history of animal development, 

 I wdll here cite a few more empirical proofs, by which alone the 

 correctness of Dzierzon's theory would be convincingly shown, 

 if its importance did not require still more impressive facts for 

 its establishment. 



I must not omit to mention that Dzierzon himself, after calling 

 a number of opponents into the field by the promulgation of 

 his new theory, and after all possible imaginable objections had 

 been raised from the most various sides against its correct- 

 ness, began to doubt the perfect tenability of his theory. Not- 

 withstanding that very recently Dzierzon expresses himself 



