58 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HONEY-BEE. 



133. Dzierzon appears to have been the first to ascertain 

 the truth on this subject; and his discovery must certainly 

 be ranked among the most astonishing facts in all the range 

 of animated nature. 



Dzierzon asserted that all impregnated eggs produce fe- 

 males, either workers or queens; and all unimpregnated ones, 

 males, or drones! He stated that in several of his hives he 

 found drone-laying queens, whose wings were so imperfect 

 that they could not fly, and which, on examination, proved 

 to be unfecundated. Hence, he concluded that the eggs 

 laid by an unimpregnated queen-bee had sufficient vitality 

 to produce drones. 



133. Parthenogenesis, meaning ''generation of a virgin," 

 is the name given to this faculty of a female, to produce 

 offspring without having been fecundated, and is not at all 

 rare among insects. 



134. In the Autumn of 1852, our assistant found a young 

 queen whose progeny consisted entirely of drones. The 

 colony had been formed by removing a few combs contain- 

 ing bees, brood, and eggs, from another hive, and had raised 

 a new queen. Some eggs were found in one of the combs, 

 and young bees were already emerging from the cells, all of 

 which were drones. As there were none but worker-cells in 

 the hive, they were reared in them, and not having space for 

 full development, they were dwarfed in size, although the 

 bees had pieced the cells to give more room to their occu- 

 pants. 



We were not only surprised to find drones reared in worker- 

 cells, but equally so that a young queen, who at first lays 

 only the eggs of workers, should be laying drone-eggs; and 

 at once conjectured that this was a case of an unimpregnated 

 drone-laying queen, sufficient time not having elapsed for her 

 impregnation to be unnaturally retarded. All necessary pre- 

 cautions were taken to determine this point. The queen was 

 removed from the hive, and although her wings appeared to 

 be perfect, she could not fly. It seemed probable, therefore, 

 that she had never been able to leave the hive for impregnation. 



