68 AUSTRALASIAN 



The statement in Propositions 3 and 9, that the queen 

 " can effect or omit at pleasure " the impregnation of the egg 

 when passing the spermatheca, has also been open to much 

 doubt until the recent investigations made by Mr. F. R. 

 Cheshire, which were published in the British Bee Journal 

 in the months of November and December, 1884, and which 

 seem to decide that question in the most satisfactory way, and 

 beyond all doubt. Referring to fig. 18, the reader will bear in 

 mind that it is now ascertained, as set forth in Proposition 8, 

 that the result of the act of fecundation by the drone is simply 

 to fill the spermatheca with a glandular secretion containing 

 the infinitely small spermatozoa, one of which must be intro- 

 duced into the egg through a small opening at its lower end, 

 called the micropyle, in order to change its nature from male 

 to female. The eggs so developed in the ovaries are now 

 understood to be all male eggs ; if they pass through the ovi- 

 duct unaltered, they will produce drones ; if they receive a 

 spermatozoon into the micropyle while passing the spermatheca 

 on the downward passage, they develop into workers or queens, 

 i.e., into worker eggs. The question heretofore has been, how 

 can the queen control the fecundation of the egg 1 It was for 

 a long time supposed that when the queen inserted her abdomen 

 into the narrow worker cells, in order to deposit her egg, the 

 pressure from the sides of the cell was sufficient to open the 

 passage from the spermatheca, and lead to the impregnation of 

 the passing egg, whereas in a drone cell there was supposed to 

 be no pressure on the body, and that therefore an unimpreg- 

 nated egg was laid in it. With regard to the queen cells, in 

 order to support this theory, it had to be assumed that the 

 queen did not lay direct in them, but that the workers supplied 

 these cells with impregnated eggs from the worker cells. Mr. 

 Cheshire, on the contrary, proves that the queen does lay eggs 

 in the queen cells, and further, that no outside pressure, even if 

 leading to the death of the insect, could force open the sperma- 

 theca ; that, on the other hand, she has perfect control over 

 the impregnation of the eggs, and can lay male or female eggs 

 when and where she pleases. He has discovered and described 

 the beautiful valves by which the passage fiom the spermatheca 

 into the oviduct are guarded, the muscles by which the queen 

 can open and close them at will, and the manner in which the 

 egg passing down from the ovary is allowed to receive one of 



