IN THE HONEY-BEE. 65 



with peculiar reserve and caution upon certain points of his 

 theory*, other experienced Apiarians still held firmly to it, as 

 after it had once become perfectly familiar to them, by its 

 assistance every occurrence in a bee-hive, however unexpected 

 or apparently strange, was instantly understood by them. 



Above all we must here mention Herr von Berlepsch, who 

 has set himself the task of testing Dzierzon's theory in every 

 direction, with his abundance of bee-hives. His establishment 

 of Bees, which is most carefully attended to, and kept in the 

 most exemplary order, also offers quite uniquely in its kind, by 

 the disposition, arrangement and mass of its materials, the best 

 and most certain opportunity of testing and answering those 

 questions relating to Bee-life raised by Dzierzon. 



The following extremely interesting experiments were made 

 by Berlepsch, which must again convert Dzierzon himself, since 

 he appears to have become a doubter of his own theory. 



In May 1854 Berlepsch caught an old fertile queen f, and 

 confined her in a small queen's cage, in order to incorporate her 

 with a new colony of Bees after its establishment. She was in 

 the normal state, and up to that time had produced the neces- 

 sary drones and workers. Berlepsch gives the following account 

 of this queen : — "As I was closing the lid (of the queen's cage), 

 which ran in a groove, I pinched the queen so strongly at the 

 apex of the abdomen, that she contracted the whole abdomen 

 like a bee that has been stung, and allowed it to drag after her. 

 I thought at first that she was lost, but as she was still living 

 an hour afterwards, and sitting again extended and quiet, I gave 

 her back to her people. She laid, as before, thousands of eggs, 

 but from all these nothing but drones were henceforward deve- 

 loped. If I had only dissected this queen as soon as I became 

 aware of her drone-productiveness, I should at least have seen 

 whether the (seminal) vesicle was still in existence and normally 

 filled. But I delayed the dissection, and when at length I 

 wished to undertake it, the queen was gone. This certainly 

 very remarkable occurrence, which speaks loudly in favour of 

 Dzierzon's hypothesis of the unfecundated state of all male eggs, 



* See his Bienenfreund aus Schlesien, 1854, No. 8. p. 64. 

 t See the letter addressed to me by Berlepsch in the Bienenzeitung, 1855, 

 No. 7- p. 7$. 



F 



