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. Weferring 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, 
2.¢., into worker eggs. The question heretofore has been, how 
can the queen control the fecundation of the egg? 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 init. 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 from 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 
