64 AUSTRALASIAN 
copulation is accomplished outside the hive and while on the 
wing high in the air. 4. That one impregnation was sufficient 
to fertilise all the eggs laid by the queens subsequently for two 
years at least, perhaps for life. 5. But that if the act of 
impregnation was delayed beyond the twenty-first day of the 
queen’s life, her eggs would afterwards produce only drones. 
Huber also proved that queens could be reared from the larvee 
of worker eggs, and also that in some rare cases workers were 
able to lay eggs, which, however, could only produce drones. 
He investigated other matters of the greatest importance to 
the science of bee-culture, and has been gratefully designated 
THE PRINCE OF APICULTURISTS by Langstroth. He failed, 
however, to discover the secrets of the spermatheca, and re- 
mained under the false impression that the fertilisation of the 
eggs took place in the ovaries and that there were two sorts of 
eges, one sort to produce workers and queens, the other to 
produce drones, and that they occupied separate portions of 
the ovaries. His cotemporary, Schirach, who also contributed 
much to apiarian science, supposed that one branch of the 
ovaries contained the one sort and the second branch the other 
sort of fertilised eggs. In this state the science remained for 
some sixty years. Langstroth says it is now ascertained that 
Posel, in a work published at Munich in 1784—therefore 
previous to the experiments of Huber-—“ describes the sperma- 
theca and its contents and the use of the latter in impregnating 
the passing egg;” and also that “years ago the celebrated 
Dr. John Hunter and others supposed that there must be a 
permanent receptacle for the male sperm opening into the 
oviduct.” Nothing certain was known, however, until 1845, 
when the brilliant discoveries of Dzierzon led to the promul- 
gation of the THEORY which bears his name, and especially to 
the doctrine of 
PARTHENOGENESIS. 
On this point Professor Cook says :— 
‘This strange anomaly—development of the eggs without impreg- 
nation—was discovered and proved by Dzierzon in 1845. Dr. Dzierzon, 
who as a student of practical and scientific apiculture must rank with 
the great Huber, is a Roman Catholic priest of Carlsmarkt, Germany. 
This doctrine—called Parthenogenesis, which means produced from a 
virgin—is still doubted by some quite able bee-keepers, though the 
proofs are irrefragable.” 
