64 THE BEE AS AN INSECT. [Ch. i. 



ot parthenogenesis or virgin breeding — the law that life 

 is imparted by the mother independently, and that every 

 egg as originally developed in her ovaries is of the male 

 sex, but that whenever fertilised with the male fluid it 

 becomes transformed into a female ! 



To convert this hypothesis into a demonstration, Von 

 Berlepsch invited to his apiary in succession the two 

 great comparative anatomists Professors Leuckart and 

 Von Siebold, and furnished each with a number of both 

 drone and worker eggs for microscopic examination. 

 Leuckart examined the surfaces of the eggs ; Von Siebold, 

 who followed him, tried the interiors, and the latter by 

 this means was triumphantly successful, for, after the most 

 careful preparation of his subjects, he detected in thirty 

 out of forty worker eggs from one to four spermatozoa 

 apiece, while in his twenty-four drone eggs he found 

 not a single one. The exceptions were insufficient to 

 invalidate the results, for the ten worker eggs in which no 

 signs of impregnation were found were only the failures 

 of observation to be naturally expected in so delicate a 

 scrutiny. Thus the fact was established that eggs which 

 produce male bees are descended from the female only 

 — in other words, that drones have no fathers ! 



Most strikingly has this law been corroborated by a 

 discovery which we owe to the introduction of the 

 Italian bee —a discovery, too, which any bee-keeper can 

 make for himself. If an Italian queen is crossed v/ith 

 an English drone, or vice versa, the W07-kers only of her 



