THE QUEEN. 55 
upon insects, made in the latter part of the seventeenth 
century, has given ahighly magnified drawing of the ovaries 
of the queen-bee, a reduced copy of which we present 
(Plate V) to our readers. The small globular sac (D), com- 
municating with the oviduct (£), which he thought secreted 
a fluid for sticking the eggs to the base of the cells, is the 
seminal reservoir, or spermatheca. Any one who will care- 
fully dissect a queen-bee, may see this sac, even with the 
naked eye. 
It will be seen that the ovaries (G and #7) are double, each 
consisting of an amazing number of ducts filled with eggs, 
which gradually increase in size.* 
131. Huber, while experimenting to ascertain how the 
queen was fecundated, confined some young ones to their 
hives by contracting the entrances, so that they were more 
than three weeks old before they could go in search of the 
drones. To his amazement, the queens whose impregnation 
was thus retarded never laid any eggs but such as produced 
drones! 
He tried this experiment repeatedly, but always with the 
same result. Bee-keepers, even from the time of Aristotle, 
had observed that all the brood in a hive were occasionally 
drones. 
132. 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, 
* Since the first edition of this work was issued, we have ascertained that Po- 
sel (page 54) describes the oviduct of the queen, the spermatheca and its con- 
tents, and the use of the latter in impregnating the passing egg. His work was 
published at Munich, in 1784. It seems also from his work (‘‘A Complete 
Treatise of Forest and Horticultural Bee-Culture,’’ page 36), that before the 
investigations of Huber, Jansha, the bee-keeper royal of Maria Theresa, had 
discovered the fact that the youngqueens leave their hive in search of the drones. 
