and its Economie Management. 51 
finite or crude experiment. Zhe investigator was too late, 
the workers had been before him. 
But apart from the actual germ, no queen can mate 
without her whole system being changed. The germs 
received at copulation are naturally carried in a fluid 
medium, which is largely absorbed into her system while 
the spermatozoa are being slowly directed (over the course 
of an hour or more) to their permanent location, the germ 
sac, at one side of the oviduct. 
Because these germs are ultimately located in one 
compartment, it is erroneously considered they are conse- 
quently isolated from any contact with the rest of the 
queen’s system. It has been generally taught that the 
queen is able to fertilise all eggs intended to become 
workers or queens, and that she is equally able to withhold’ 
the germs when depositing eggs in drone cells. 
The same theorists overlook the fact that the ovaries of 
the queen, because of the fluid injection and absorption, can 
never again be in the original virgin state. They would 
also consider, or so their method of reasoning demonstrates, 
that the spermatozoa are so many dry shot, or hard peas, 
when once locked away in the sperm sac; entirely ignoring 
the fact that they are a living, perpetually writhing mass, 
that must have continual sustenance from the queen’s body. 
If this active mass must exist by drawing upon secretions 
expressly prepared for its use in maintaining the utmost 
vitality, then is it a fact that there can be no flow without 
a return; and these germs cannot live within without 
affecting the whole of the queen’s system. 
There are, then, three distinct points referring to the 
inevitable taint of the drone progeny of a fertile queen. 
First, the unavoidable mingling of serum at mating; 
secondly, the change in the queen’s nature by carrying the 
spermatozoa that may not be locked away from her general 
