NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HONEY BEE. 9 



the full-sized egg just ready to lay, to those that 

 are yet very minute. All these tubes lead to a 

 channel called the "Oviduct," each ovary having its own 

 duct, but these soon unite into one common channel ; just 

 below this junction is a little globular sac called "the Sper- 

 matheca," about one thirty-third of an inch in diameter, 

 covered with a beautiful white network of tracheje, or air 

 tubes, and communicating by a small open duct with the 

 main oviduct, before the mouth of which every egg must 

 pass on its passage to the cell. Like the females of most 

 insects, the Queen Bee has sexual intercourse but once 

 in her life, and in the act of union with the Drone the 

 spermatheca is filled with the seminal fluid. The phe- 

 nomenon that sometimes occurred in a Bee-hive of the 

 Queen laying eggs that produced males only, had for 

 ages puzzled philosophers without any satisfactory 

 solution, and it was reserved for Dzierzon to promulgate 

 a new and startling theory of reproduction, which, in 

 the words of its distinguished author, is said to have 

 "explained all the phenomena of the Bee- hive as 

 perfectly as the Copernican hypothesis the phenomena 

 of the heavens." Dzierzon first expressed his views 

 upon the reproduction of Bees in the year 1845. The 

 principal points of this theory may be shortly expressed 

 thus: — 1st. That the Queen (female Bee), to become 

 good for anything (i. e. to breed Workers), must be fer- 

 tilized by a Drone (the male), and that the copulation 

 takes place only in the air ; that Drone eggs do not 

 require fecundation, but that the co-operation of the 

 Drone is absolutely necessary when Worker Bees are to 

 be produced ; that in copulation the ovaries are not 

 fecundated, but the seminal receptacle (or spermatheca), 

 which in the virgin Queen is filled with a limpid fluid, 

 is saturated with semen, after which it is more clearly 



