90 STRANGE FACTS ABOUT QUEENS 



creatures. Yet the truth remains that it occurs 

 in several groups which have nevertheless two 

 well-defined sexes. The aphides are a fairly well- 

 known example, where after the union of two 

 sexes, the progeny produces, without any further 

 sexual intercourse, another generation. 



The worker bee, therefore, without being 

 fertilised, produces young, but these young are all 

 drones, or, singularly enough, the opposite sex 

 to herself. It would be difficult to explain how 

 and why this should be the case if it were not 

 that fully developed queens sometimes have the 

 same peculiarity of producing drones only. It 

 was found that when a queen, on account of bad 

 weather or other circumstances, was unable to 

 leave the hive in order to mate with a drone, 

 she nevertheless commenced to lay eggs, but all 

 these eggs produced drones. 



To Dr. Dzierzon and Professor Siebold we owe 

 the explanation of these strange circumstances. 

 The latter, an eminent German anatomist, showed 

 clearly that the queen bee has not only within her 

 abdomen two large ovaries full of eggs, but she 

 also has a receptacle which he called the sferma- 

 theca, and it was found that the contents of this 

 organ differed markedly in the individual cases 

 of a fertile queen and an unfertile one, a fertile 

 worker's sfermatheca being also similar as regards 

 contents to that of an unfertile queen. It thus 

 became clear that when a queen is mated, the 



