230 BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



and from the parts of the oviduct above it, through 

 the deeply-folded pouch (/) to the spermatheca, is so 

 involved, that it would not be possible for the sper- 

 matozoa, by following it, to enter the latter when 

 given up by the drone; but that, in the early life 

 of the queen, the second wider and straighter 

 channel to which I have referred, is fully open, 

 and by it the spermatozoa, with their inscrutable 

 power of self-direction, pass upwards, avoiding the 

 mazes of the fertilising pouch, and packing them- 

 selves for future use pretty much as they were 

 arranged in the spermatophore in the drone's body. 

 The queen, if still unmated at four or five weeks old, 

 becomes incapable of copulation, or, at least, she 

 evinces no desire for it, which fact possibly marks the 

 time when this lower passage closes, such closure, in 

 a mated queen, forcing the spermatozoa, in descend- 

 ing, to take their way by the fertilising pouch. 



If a central comb be lifted from a hive during 

 the summer months, eggs in number will be dis- 

 covered. If one of these be removed from either a 

 worker or a drone cell, by means of the wetted point 

 of a camel-hair pencil (for they are deposited with a 

 secretion covering them, which causes them to adhere 

 by the end, as at A, Fig. 46), its surface will be 

 found, if examined microscopically, to be covered by 

 a beautifully reticulated membrane (the chorion, B and 

 C), almost as though a tiny pearl had been covered 

 with what the ladies call blonde, many hundreds of 

 the meshes of which are required to coat it completely. 

 Arranging the egg so that we get a view of the larger 

 end (D) — for which nothing excels a -i-in. objective 



