I20 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



the sex of the egg, and of adapting it to the cell over 

 which she is bending. She will rarely make a mistake. How 

 does she contrive, from among the myriad eggs her ovaries 

 contain, to separate male from female, and lower them, at 

 will, into the unique oviduct ? 



Here, yet again, there confronts us an enigma of the 

 hive ; and in this case one of the most unfathomable. We 

 know that the virgin queen is not sterile ; but the eggs 

 that she lays will produce only males. It is not till after 

 the impregnation of the nuptial flight that she can produce 

 workers or drones at will. The nuptial flight places her 

 permanently in possession, till death, of the spermatozoa 

 torn from her unfortunate lover. These spermatozoa, whose 

 number Dr. Leuckart estimates at twenty-five millions, are 

 preserved alive in a special gland known as the spermatheca, 

 which is situate under the ovaries, at the entrance to the 

 common oviduct. It is imagined that the narrow aperture 

 of the smaller cells, and the manner in which the form of 

 this aperture compels the queen to bend forward, exercise 

 a certain pressure upon the spermatheca, in consequence of 

 which the spermatozoa spring forth and fecundate the egg 

 as it passes. In the large cells this pressure would not take 

 place, and the spermatheca would therefore not open. Others, 

 again, believe that the queen has perfect control over the 

 muscles that open and close the spermatheca on the vagina ; 

 and these muscles are certainly very numerous, complex, and 

 powerful. For myself, I incline to the second of these 

 hypotheses, though I do not for a moment pretend to 

 decide which is the more correct ; for, indeed, the further 

 we go and the more closely we study, the more plainly is it 



