62 AUSTRALASIAN 



the former, yet if a fly be inoculated with the product of one 

 of the two venomous glands of the bee, it will not die for a 

 long time ; the successive inoculations of the same fly with the 

 products of the two glands causes death in a very short time 

 after the second inoculation. The conclusions come to are — 

 " 1. The poison of the hymenoptera is always acid. 2. It is 

 composed of a mixture of two liquids, one strongly acid, the 

 other feebly alkaline, and acts only when both liquids are 

 present, 3. These are produced by two special glands that 

 may be called the acid gland and the alkaline gland. 4. These 

 two glands both expel their contents at the base of the throat 

 from which the sting darts out." 



REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS OF THE QUEEN. 



The most important organs of the queen-bee — themselves 

 forming perhaps one of the most wonderful objects of nature, 

 and""of which the very accurate knowledge which we now 

 possess, owing to the patient researches of many naturalists, 

 has done more than aught else for the progress of scientific 

 bee-culture — are her ovaries and the parts attached thereto, 

 which are illustrated in the following engraving. 



The two fig-shaped bodies are the ovaries, which are multi- 

 tubular, there being more than a hundred tubes (called the 

 ovigian tubes) in the two ovaries of a queen bee. In these 

 tubes the eggs grow and develop themselves until they are fit 

 to be deposited. Each ovary has a separate oviduct at bottom, 

 through, which the eggs pass for some distance, until the two 

 join in one common oviduct leading to the vulva, or vent, 

 through which the eggs are ultimately deposited. A little 

 below the junction of the passages from the two ovaries, and 

 on the outside of the common oviduct, is a small globular body, 

 shown on the right hand side in the engraving. This is a 

 hollow vessel, called the spermatheca, of which much has to be 

 said. More than two hundred years ago Swammerdam published 

 an excellent illustration of the ovaries of a queen bee, showing 

 the spermatheca, but he conjectured that it secreted a fluid for 

 sticking the eggs to the bottom of the cells in the comb. In 

 his time but little was known of what went on within the hive. 

 It was no doubt assumed by many that every single egg laid 

 by the queen required to be fertilised by a separate act of the 

 drone, while Swammerdam himself conceived the idea that no 



