PARTHENOGENESIS., 33 



which have been described cannot be said to be wholly free 

 from doubt. A hive of bees consists of three classes of indivi- 

 duals — I. A " queen," or fertile female; 2. The "workers," which 

 form the bulk of the community, and are really undeveloped 

 or sterile females ; and, 3. The " drones," or males, which are 

 only produced at certain times of the year. We have here 

 three distinct sets of beings, all of which proceed from a single 

 fertile individual, and the question arises. In what manner are 

 the differences between these produced? At a certain period 

 of the year the queen leaves the hive, accompanied by the 

 drones (or males), and takes what is known as her " nuptial 

 flight " through the air. In this flight she is impregnated by 

 the males, and it is immaterial whether this act occurs once in 

 the life of the queen, or several times, as asserted by some. 

 Be this as it may, the queen, in virtue of this single impregna- 

 tion, is enabled to produce fresh individuals for a lengthened 

 period, the semen of the males being stored up in a receptacle 

 which communicates by a tube with the oviduct, from which it 

 can be shut off at will. The ova which are to produce workers 

 (undeveloped females) and queens (fertile females) are fertil- 

 ised on their passage through the oviduct, the semen being 

 allowed to escape into the oviduct for this purpose. The sub- 

 sequent development of these fecundated ova into workers or 

 queens depends entirely upon the form of the cell into which 

 the ovum is placed, and upon the nature of the food which is 

 supplied to the larva. So far there is no doubt as to the nature 

 of the phenomena which are observed. It is asserted, how- 

 ever, by Dzierzon and Siebold, that the males or drones are 

 produced by the queen from ova which she does not allow to 

 come into contact with the semen as they pass through the 

 oviduct. This assertion is supported by the fact that if the 

 communication between the receptacle for the semen and the 

 oviduct be cut ofl", the queen will produce nothing but males. 

 Also, in crosses between the common honey-bee and the Ligu- 

 rian bee, the queens and workers alone exhibit any intermediate 

 characters between the two forms, the drones presenting the un- 

 mixed characters of the queen by whom they were produced. 



If these observations are to be accepted as established — and, 

 upon the whole, there can be no hesitation in accepting them 

 as in the main correct — ^then the drones are produced by a true 

 process of parthenogenesis ; but some observers maintain that 

 the development of any given ovum into a drone is really due 

 ■ — as in the case of the queens and workers — to the special cir- 

 cumstances under which the larva is brought up.* 



* In the case of Polistes GcUHca, Von Siebold appears to have proved 



