74 PARTHENOGENESIS 



trouble to invalidate this case detailed by Dzierzon, which is said 

 to speak against his own theory. He very justly observes*, that 

 in the preceding, Dzierzon has not established the fact that those 

 few golden drones were actually produced by the queen, and not 

 bv a very fine egg-laying Italian worker (as the half of the workers 

 in this hive consisted of these); for although the presence of an 

 egg-laying worker together with a queen is a case of the very 

 rarest occurrence, yet it can be proved that such exceptions do 

 occur. Berlepsch also points out with reason, that Dzierzon 

 was never perfectly certain on the point whether the queen, in 

 whose hive he observed the remarkable yellow drones, was by 

 birth of true German race, or produced from hybrid brood. 

 Dzierzon himself adds the warning to the statement of his casef* 

 that in such observations great caution is necessary to avoid 

 erroneous conclusions, as on such occasions we must be perfectly 

 sure that the queen belongs by birth to the right race ; for if she 

 has been produced from hybrid brood, it is impossible for her 

 to produce even pure drones, but she produces half-Italian and 

 half-German drones. However, I regarded this doubt, which had 

 been raised in Dzierzon with regard to his own theory and by 

 his own observations, as a sufficient reason for getting further in- 

 formation from Herr von Berlepsch, who had obtained great 

 experience in breeding Italian Bees for the last two years, with 

 regard to the real truth in the production of hybrids taking place 

 between Italian and German Bees. On the 2nd March of last 

 year (1856) he replied to my questions put to him for this purpose, 

 in the following manner. In the first place he referred to his 

 observations already published in the BienenzeitungX, where he 

 says : — " All queens which are of a beautiful yellow externally 

 only produce Italian drones, even when they produce partly Italian 

 and partly German workers. A German mother, which was 

 fertilized by an Italian drone, produced German and Italian 

 workers, hut only German drones. When on the contrary the 

 mother is not of a fine yellow, — when she has traces of black blood 

 in her, the drones also come forth mixed, whether the mother be 

 fertilized by a German or Italian male : of course because the 



* See the Bienenzeitung , 1855, p. 79. 



t See the Bienenfreund aus Schlesien, ut cit. supra, p. 64. 



X For the year 1856, p. 6. 



