22G1 The Zoologist— August, 1870. 



The changes m internal structure are rapid ; one day you find a mere integu- 

 ment, filled with corpuscles of white creamy-looking flakes — which on chemical 

 analysis I find to be grape-sugar and water, the very material with which the 

 nurse-bees lubricate the larvae (this however in the queen-cell forms a strong 

 pulpy bed, upon which the larva rests, but of which the worker and drone cells 

 contain none, whilst in the queen cell the jelly occupies nearly a third of the 

 cell, making it as it were a hot-bed around the queen larva) — a third day will 

 show the oesophagus commenced and the silk-forming glands also formed on 

 either side, and thus ready on the fifth day to be used through the spinnerets 

 to spin its cocoon — an act which is a marvel to me. I have discovered that the 

 bees do not form the silken respirator as has been hitherto stated, nor do they 

 hermetically seal up the cell, but leave the larva to finish the silken respirator, 

 and merely cover the sides and angles of the cells so as to strengthen them, and 

 make them fit to piiss over, like stepping stones over the heads of the pupa, 

 now resting to pass into the perfect or imago state. This the worker 

 accomplishes in twenty days, the drone in twenty-four, and the queen in 

 sixteen, subject to variations of weather, but as an average correct. 



" I have much to state of the impregnation of the queen-bee and against the 

 parthenogenesis theory of the present day, or the power of the queen to leave 

 her eggs unfertilized so as to produce either workers or drones. I believe the 

 female is the early impregnation, and the male the later impregnation, as found 

 in fact amongst animals as a rule, especially in cattle ; the last of a series of 

 ova become drones, and the earlier the workers. The eggs aU have to pa^s 

 through the common oviduct, and thus pass the mouth of the spermatotheca : 

 now whilst there is no doubt there are muscles, as Siebold has proved by 

 dissection, to extrude or restrain the eggs, these voluntary muscles have to be 

 guided. Siebold and Dzierzon say that instinct will tell the queen when to exer- 

 cise her judgment truly : at tlie moment when she pushes her abdomen into a 

 wide drone cell or the narrow cell of the worker, the distinction of the wider and 

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

 (but here let me remark this queen's abdomen, if about to lay her last series 

 or drone eggs, is larger and heavier than in her first laying workers' eggs in 

 the spring) ; but, says Siebold, she well knows by the sensation of the touch 

 that she must fertilize the eggs to be deposited in a narrow cell, whilst she has 

 to lay the egg without fecundation in a wide cell. But it is a fact that eggs 

 are laid constantly in unfinished workers' cells, and extruded as well into drone 

 cells, two or three eggs in a cell, when the queen has by some cause been 

 driven to delay laying after impregnation. But the fecundated egg being 

 required for the queen-bee, Dzierzon and Siebold have to find another reason, 

 and they add that ' 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.' I believe Prof. Owen has been misquoted by Siebold and Dzierzon ; 

 and I feel assured that the latter has also accidentally misdirected Siebold that 



