58 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HONEY-BEE. 



" The following interesting experiment was made by Berlepscli, 

 in order to confirm the drone-productiveness of a virgin queen. 

 He contrived the exclusion of queens at the end of September, 

 1854, and, therefore, at a time when there was no longer any males ; 

 he was lucky enough to keep one of them through the Winter, and 

 this pro luced drone-offspring on the 2d of March, in the following 

 year, furnishing fifteen hundred cells with brood. That this 

 drone-bearing queen remained a virgin, was proved by the dissec- 

 tion which Leuckart undertook, at the request of Berlepsch. He 

 found the state and contents of the seminal pouch of this queen to 

 be exactly of the same nature as those found in virgin queens. 

 The seminal receptacle in such females never contains semen- 

 masses, with their characteristic spermatozoids, but only a limpid 

 fluid, destitute of cells and granules which is produced from the 

 two appendicular glands of the seminal capsule; and, as I sup- 

 pose, serves the purpose of keeping the semen transferred into the 

 seminal capsule in a fresh state, and the spermatozoids active, 

 and, consequently, capable of impregnation." — (Siebold, "Parthe- 

 nogenesis.") 



139. Again, to prove that Dzierzon was right. Professor 

 Von Siebold, in 18.55, dissected several eggs at the Apiary 

 of Baron Von Berlepsch, and he found spermatozoids in 

 every female egg, or egg laid in worker-cell, but although 

 he examined thirty-two male eggs, or eggs laid in drone- 

 cells, he could not discover a single spermatozoid either in 

 or around them. In the act of copulation, the sperm of the 

 drone is received into the spermatheca (Plate V, D), which 

 is placed near and can empty itself into the oviduct. When 

 an egg passes by the spermatheca, if the circumstances are 

 such that a few spermatozoids empty out of the bag on the 

 egg, the sex of it is changed from male to female. 



It apx)ears that there is in each egg a small opening 

 (7nicropyle, i and j, fig. 24), through which the living sperm- 

 atozoids enter, when the circumstances are such that a few 

 of them can slip out the seminal bag and slide into the 

 oviduct. Such is the process of impregnation. 



140. Aristotle noticed, more than 2,000 years ago, that 



