80 MANUAL OF THE APIARY. 



would accord with what we know of muscular organs. Ber- 

 lepsch believed that a queen that commenced laying as a virgin 

 could never lay impregnated eggs, even though she afterwards 

 mated. Langstroth thought that he had observed to the 

 contrary. 



If the queen be obseyved after a successful "wedding tour," 

 she will be seen to bear the marks of success in the pendant 

 drone appendages, consisting of the penis, the yellow cul-de- 

 sacks, and the hanging thread-like ducts. 



It is not at all likely that a queen, after she has met a 

 drone, ever leaves the hive again except that she leaves with 

 a swarm. Some of the observing apiarists think that an oH 

 queen may be again impregnated. The fact that queens, with 

 clipped wings, are fertile as long as others, makes me think 

 that cases which have led to such conclusions are capable of 

 other explanation. 



If the queen lays eggs before meeting the drone, or if for 

 any reason she fails to mate, her eggs will only produce male 

 bees. This strange anomaly — development of the eggs with- 

 out impregnation — was discovered and proved by Dzierzon, in 

 1845. Dr. Dzierzon, who, as a student of practical and scien- 

 tific apiculture, must rank with the great Huber, is a Roman 

 Catholic priest of Carlsmarkt, Germany. This doctrine — 

 called parthenogenesis, which means produced from a virgin 

 — is still doubted by some quite able bee-keepers, though the 

 "proofs are irrefragable : 1st. Unmated queens will lay eggs 

 that will develop, but drones always result. 2d. Old queens 

 often become drone-layers, but examination shows that the 

 spermatheca is void of seminal fluid. Such an examination 

 was first made by Prof. Siebold, the great German anatomist, 

 in 1843, and later by Leuckart and Leidy. I have myself 

 made several such examinations. The spermatheca can 

 easily be seen by the unaided vision, and by crushing it on a 

 glass slide, by compressing with a thin glass cover, the dif- 

 ference between the contained fluid in the virgin and impreg- 

 nated queen is very patent, even with a low power. In the 

 latter it is more viscid and yellow, and the vesicle more dis- 

 tended. By use of a high power, the active spermatozoa or 

 sperm-cells become visible. 3d. Eggs in drone-cells are 

 found by the microscopist to be void of the sperm-cells, which 



