DIVISION OF ENTOMOLOGY. U 



ends of the accessory glands (not the "bean" or bulb)* are the regular, 

 normal, and final reservoir for spermatozoa in drones able to fly. 

 . Since the bulb was regularly found to be empty, rather than filled 

 with spermatozoa or any definitely arranged compact spermatophore, 

 the question may well arise as to the actual reason for existence of the 

 bulb-cavity and the swollen ventral wall of the same. It is possible that 

 during the final marriage flight the bulb-cavity may receive some 

 spermatozoa; that may not be determined — however, a necessary and 

 actual use of the cavity may be observed by holding a drone and care- 

 fully watching the large dorsal elastic thickening and the accompany- 

 ing dorsal plates as the bulb is made to pass slowly through the process 

 of eversion. It will be seen that the thickening and plates together, 

 although elastic, can not make a short bend during evagination as does 

 the thinner portions of the wall, but that in efl:ect, they must somer- 

 sault or swing, in a body, around the "prongs" of the plates as a pivot 

 within the cavity afforded by the expanded ventral wall of the bulb. In 

 other words, the large elastic thickening of the bulb with the pair of 

 accompanying plates could not evert if the thinner opposite wall of the 

 bulb were not correspondingly enlarged. The use of the elastic thick- 

 ening and the pair of bulb-plates, themselves, will appear later (see 

 page 15). 



When the characters of the reproductive organs of the drone and 

 queen had thus been reviewed carefully and fixed in mind, measures 

 were taken to observe queens leaving the hive on the mating flight and 

 to intercept them on their return in order that the exact orientation 

 of the torn male organ in the vagina of the queen might be studied. 



POSITION ASSUMED BY THE QI;BEN AND DRONE IN COITION^ ON THE MATING 



FLIQHT. 



The queens used in making observations on the "mating flight" were 

 obtained directly from nursery cages kept in a hive body above the 

 brood chamber of a strong colony, and separated from it only by a 

 queen excluder. These queens were introduced into hive nuclei, con- 

 taining three to five regular Langstroth frames, either by the intro- 

 ducing cage, or by the smoke method. Over the entrance to each nucleus 

 was kept an Alley's Improved Queen and Drone Trap — the trap en- 

 trance at the back stopped to a small opening. The traps Avere used 

 in order that the virgins might not take flight except when the nucleus 

 was under observation. Other work made it impossible to watch the 

 nuclei all the time during that period of the day when the virgins were 

 most apt to attempt to fly. The plan, therefore, made it possible to 

 conserve virgins for those periods when observations could be made and 

 in that way much time was saved. Any immediate or recent movement 

 of the queen from the nucleus into the trap was quickly made known 

 by a certain excitement of the workers in the trap-entrance and at 



•Two other considerations would malie it seem unlilrely that the cavity of the bulb should 

 be regarded as the flnal reservoir for spermatozoa before their ejection into the vagina. First, 

 the large amount of sperm fluid found in the vagina of the "newly mated" queens examined 

 (as explained later, p. 12) seemed much more than could be contained by the space of the bulb- 

 cavity. Second, no such muscles as are found in the walls of the seminal vesicles and acces- 

 sory glands (Pigs. 13, and 7 and 8) would be needed to pass the spermatozoa along slowly to 

 the "bulb," there to be stored. The heavy musculature in the walls of these paired organs in- 

 dicates 'a function of squirting the sperm fluid through the ejeculatory duct with considerable 

 force. 



