§ IX.] REPRODUCTIVE ECONOMY. 65 



progeny will be mongrels — the drones will invariably 

 retain the pure blood of the queen, thus proving to 

 demonstration that they owe their origin to her alone. 

 Should a mongrel drone be then observed, it will be 

 a sure sign that a fertile worker is in the hive : the 

 queen will not be its mother. Dr. Donhoff, we are 

 told, confirmed the same law by a converse method, 

 having in 1855 obtained a worker bee from a drone egg 

 which he had artificially impregnated with the male fluid. 



The queen, as we have observed, is capable before 

 fertilisation of becoming the mother of drones, but it 

 is believed by some that if she has once commenced 

 drone-laying it is impossible for her to become subse- 

 quently fertilised. Mr. Langstroth, however, mentions 

 an instance to the contrary, where a queen of his, after 

 persistently laying drone eggs for a week or two, became 

 after that the happy mother of a thriving colony of 

 workers. Von Berlepsch alludes to this case (with others 

 like it), but is unconvinced, being suspicious that here 

 again it was a fertile worker and not the queen who laid 

 the drone eggs. But looking to the fact that vcA-ay per- 

 manently unfertile queens lay drone eggs, while others 

 lay no eggs at all, does it not seem reasonable that a 

 similar difference may subsist previous to fecundation ? 

 Thus, while the Baron is on firm ground as to the general 

 rule, we incline to a belief that as to the exception the 

 American observer is quite correct. 



Dzierzon thus writes: "In general, so long as the 



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