38 THE HIVE AND HONBT-BEE. 



in the small or worker-cells, and that she makes no mis- 

 takes. Dzlerzou inferred, therefore, that there was some 

 way in which she was able to decide the sex of the. egg 

 before it was laid, and that she must have such a control 

 over the mouth of the seminal sac aSto be able to extrude 

 her eggs, allowing them at will to receive or not a portion 

 of its fertilizing contents. In this way he thought she 

 determined their sex, according to the size of the cells 

 in which she laid them. 



My friend, Mr. Samuel Wagner, of York, Pennsyl- 

 vania, has advanced a highly ingenious theory, which 

 accounts for all the facts, without admitting that the 

 queen has any special knowledge or will on the subject. 

 He supposes that when she deposits her eggs in the 

 worker-cells, her body is sUghtly compressed by their 

 size, thus causing the eggs as thpy pass the spermatheca 

 to receive its vivifying influence.* On the contrary, when 

 she is laying in drone-cells, as this comjDreSsion cannot 

 take place, the mouth of the spermatheca is kept closed, 

 and the eggs are necessarily unfecundated. 



In the Autumn of 1852, my assistant found a young 

 queen whose progeny consisted entirely of drones. The 

 colony had been formed by removing a few combs con- 

 taining 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 occupants. 



I was 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 \\ orkers, should be laying drone-eggs ; 



