NATURAL HTSTORY OF THE IIONEY-BBB. 41 



unusual excitement, and the whole colony were almost as 

 much a^tated as though they were swarming. After she 

 had been in the second hive a short time, I found that she 

 had laid a number of drone-eggs. They were deposited 

 near the bottom and edge of the comb, in cells a little 

 larger than the worker-size, and which the bees had begun 

 to lengthen, to adapt them to the growth of their occu- 

 pants. There was no other brood in the hive. On the 

 9th of August, I found the combs nearly filled with 

 worker-brood, in a state considerably less advanced than 

 the drones. Is there any reason to doubt that these 

 di-one-eggs were laid by the queen before, and the worker- 

 eggs after, her impregnation ? 



In Italy there is a variety of the honey-bee differing in 

 size and color from the common kind. If a queen of this 

 variety is crossed with the common drones, her drone- 

 progeny will be Italian, and her worker brood a cross 

 between the two ; thus showing that the kind of drones 

 she will produce has no dependence on the male by which 

 she is fecundated. 



It appears from recent discoveries in physiology, that to 

 impregnate the ovum of an animal it is necessary that the 

 spermatozoa should not simply come in cont^t with it, 

 but actually enter into it through a small opening. In 

 applying this discovery to bees. Prof. Siebold, of Germany, 

 dissected a number of worker-eggs, and found in each 

 from one to three spermatozoa ; while he found none in 

 dissecting drone-eggs. 



Dr. Donhoff, of Germany, in the Summer 1855, reared 

 a worker-larvse from a drone-egg,* which he had artifi- 

 cially impregnated. 



* I attempted to do this in 1852 ; but to my great disappointment, the bees re- 

 moved or devoured all the eggs thus treated ; owing as I then supposed to their 

 unwillingness to raise worlcers in drone-cells. If some of the eggs just deposited 

 in a piece of drone-comb are touched with a fine brush dipped in the diluted semen 



