BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF CANADA. 
151 
grub in the queen's cell which was not ultimately to become a queeni Supposing 
the experiment quite decisive, what would be the necessary deduction ? It would 
be this : that eggs, as laid by the queen, had the elements of both sexes, and that it 
depended on future treatment which of the two sexes should predominate. 
On a ^norz grounds it is obvious that the production of drones from neuter 
larvae, is a corollary to the similar production of the queen. The object of this 
remarkable power is the continuance of the vitality of the hive ; but the object is not 
gained, merely by the production of the queen, for she cannot be fertilized without 
the existence of males. It is only during a small part of the year that drones are 
found in the hive, so that if the queen should die at any other time, there wonld 
be no object served by the production of a new queen, unless drones were pro- 
duced at the same time. 
Unless we accept the above bisexual hypothesis, there is no alternative but to 
adopt another, which gives the queen the power of determining at pleasure the sex 
of the egg which she is about to lay. When you look into a glass single-comb hive 
in the breeding season, you see the queen constantly depositing eggs in cells. All 
the eggs she deposits in small cells become neuters ; all deposited in large cells be- 
come drones. Huber thought that the ova of the different sexes were disposed in 
regular order in the ovaries of the queen, so that the order of deposition in the 
cells must follow the pre-arranged order in the ovaries. According to this idea, 
the queen laid neuter eg^s for months together, and when drone eggs came, she 
deposited them in continuous order in the larger cells. This, however, is not the 
case. In watching the movements of the queen across the comb, you see her 
depositing an egg in a neuter cell, and when she comes to a drone cell, she deposits 
one there also, and the product is always a male or a female, according as the cell 
is a large or small one. Take a queen from a compartment of a hive, when she is 
laying only neuter eggs, and place her where there are only drone cells, and she 
will immediately deposit eggs which will become drones. We are, therefore, shut 
up to one of two hypotheses; the first is that there is no difference of sex in the 
eggs as laid, and that the subsequent sexual difference is due to size of cell, tem- 
perature, &c. ; or that the queen has the power of determining the sex at the mo- 
ment of laying. The latter i- the hypothesis of Siebold ; the former is the one to 
which my experiments would lead. Siebold's hyyothesis is that the queen when 
depositing an egg in a small cell, at the same time, by an act of volition, inserts 
into it one or more spermatozoa ; when depositing an egg in a large cell, she omits 
this process and a spermatozoon is not inserted. The former egg becomes a neuter ; 
the latter a drone. Leuckart, the greatest authority on the ova of insects, tried in 
vain to detect the spermatozoa in the eggs of bees. In the insect ova there is an ap- 
erture, or series of apertures, at one extremity, called the micropyle, through which 
the spermatozoa penetrate and fertilize the egg ; and frequently, after deposition. 
