24 THE' BEE AS AN L\ SECT. [Ch. i 



her second day's exit, sails away high into the air, and 

 sometimes to a considerable distance horizontally as well. 

 " A Renfrewshire Bee-keeper " states in the British Bee 

 yournal, of May 1877, that an undoubted instance had 

 come to his knowledge in which a common queen, 

 located five miles distant in a bee-line measured upon 

 the Ordnance map, had become impregnated by one of 

 his own Italian drones — these being positively the only 

 Italians in the entire district. 



On the queen's return — that is, supposing her object 

 to have been achieved — she will exhibit the male organ 

 adhering to her extremity, and sometimes she is unable 

 to free herself of it, nor can the bee-keeper give her 

 any assistance without the risk of effects as fatal to 

 herself as they were to her spouse. The explanation of 

 this series of phenomena lies in the structure of the organ 

 itself. It is simply the expanded prolongation of the 

 seminal duct, and is attached to the orifice like the 

 sleeve of a coat to the shoulder, but is wholly internal. 

 To be protruded it must therefore be turned literally 

 inside out, and to effect this a powerful inflation is 

 required, in which act the forces of the system are in 

 some way fatally ruptured ; while, as Professor Leuckart 

 very rationally deduces — thus clearing up another mystery 

 — it is only when the breathing vessels are filled by 

 motion in the air that the drone is able to accomplish it 

 at all. Then the singular scales and protuberances with 

 which the organ is beset render it when once inserted 



