Agamic Reproduction in Other Insects. 95 
acterize the cynips or gall-flies; while the great Bonnet 
first discovered what may be noticed on any summer day 
all about us, even on the house plants at our very windows 
that parthenogenesis is best illustrated by the aphides, or 
plant-lice. In the fall males and females appear which 
mate, when the females lay eggs which in the spring pro- 
duce only females; these again produce only females, and 
thus on for several generations, sometimes fifteen or twenty, 
till with the cold of autumn come again the males and 
females. Any person can easily demonstrate this fact for 
himself. The summer plant-lice are hatched within the 
mother louse, or are ovoviviporous. It is easy to capture 
a young louse just as it is born, and isolate it on a plant, 
when soon we shall find it giving birth to young lice, though 
it has never even seen any louse, male or female, since birth. 
Bonnet observed seven successive generations of productive 
virgins. Duval noted nine generations in seven months, 
while Kyber observed production exclusively by partheno- 
genesis in a heated room for four years. So, we see that 
this strange and almost incredible method of increase is not 
rare in the great insect world. 
In two or three days after she is impegnated, the queen, 
under normal circumstances, commences to lay, usually 
worker-eggs, and if the condition of the hive impels to no 
further swarming that season, no drones will be required 
and so only worker-eggs will be laid. In many localities 
and in certain favorable years in all localities, however, 
further swarming will occur. 
It is frequently noticed that the young queen at first 
lays quite a number of drone-eggs. Queen-breeders often 
observe this in their nuclei. This continues for only a few 
days. This does not seem strange. The act of freeing 
the sperm-cells from the spermatheca is muscular and vol- 
untary, and that these muscles should not always act 
promptly at first, is not strange, nor is it unprecedented. 
Mr. Wagner suggested that the size of the cell determined 
the sex, as in the small cells the pressure on the abdomen 
forced the fluid from the spermatheca. Mr. Quinby also 
favored this view. I greatly question this theory. All 
observing apiarists have known eggs to be laid in worker- 
