60 PHYSIOLOGY OP THE HONEY-BEE. 



"The following interesting experiment was made by Ber- 

 lepsch, in order to confirm the drone-productiveness of a virgin 

 queen. He contrived the confinement of queens at the end of 

 September, 1S54, and, therefore, at a time when there was no 

 longer any males; he was lucky enough to keep one of them 

 through the Winter, and this produced drone-offspring on the 

 2d of March, in the following year, furnishing fifteen hundred 

 cells with brood. That this drone-bearing queen remained a 

 virgin, was proved by the dissection which Leuekart undertook, 

 at the request of Berlepseh. He found the state and contents 

 of the seminal pouch of this queen to be exactly of the same 

 nature as those found in virgin queens. The seminal receptacle 

 in such females never contains semen-masses, with their char- 

 acteristic spermatozoids, but only a limpid fluid, destitute of 

 cells and granules which is produced from the two appendicu- 

 lar glands of the seminal capsule; and, as I suppose, serves the 

 purpose of keeping the semen transferred into the seminal cap- 

 sule in a fresh state, and the spermatozoids active, and, conse- 

 quently, capable of impregnation." — (Siebold, "Parthenogen- 

 esis. ' ') 



139. Again, to prove that Dzierzon was right, Professor 

 Von Siebold, in 1855, dissected several eggs at the Apiary 

 of Baron Von Berlepseh, and he found spermatozoids in 

 every female egg, or egg laid in worker-cell, but although 

 he examined thirty-two male eggs, or eggs laid in drone- 

 cells, he could not discover a single spermatozoid either in 

 or around them. In the act of copulation, the sperm of the 

 drone is received into the spermatheca (Plate 10, D), which 

 is placed near and can empty itself into the oviduct. When 

 an egg passes by the spermatheca, if the circumstances are 

 such that a few spermatozoids empty out of the bag on the 

 egg, the sex of it is changed from male to female. 



It appears that there is in each egg a small opening called 

 micropyle, through which the living spermatozoids enter, when 

 the circumstances are such that a few of them can slip out of 

 the seminal bag and slide into the oviduct. Such is the pro- 

 cess of impregnation. 



140. Aristotle noticed, more than 2,000 years ago, that 



