QUEEN ORGANS, 
137 
In winter the number of egg germs will be reduced 
to one-half, while scarcely any perfect eggs will be 
found, so that the ovaries decrease in size. In 
a virgin queen, before the eggs begin to develop, the 
tubes only contain cells, therefore the swellings are 
absent. The tubes have their separate openings, 
which unite at the commencement of the oviducts 
(Fig. 55, h d), forming beneath them a trumpet-shaped 
cavity, having thicker outer walls than the tubes of 
the ovaries. The oviducts are provided with longi- 
tudinal and transverse muscular fibres, which give 
them great elasticity. The two tubes of the oviducts 
unite at c, continue as a single oviduct, and expand, 
forming the vagina (e), furnished with strong muscular 
walls. The vagina has on either side two pocket-like 
swellings {bursa copulatrix^ ff)y which receive the 
two horned pneumophyses of the male organ. The 
opening of the vagina appears as a long slit at the 
edge of the last ventral plate. Between this and the 
last abdominal plate are situated the sting and the 
poison glands, which are placed between the vagina 
and the chyle stomach. Connected by a tube, having 
its opening near the commencement of the common 
oviduct, is a small globular sac, called the spermatheca 
{receptaculum se 7 ?iinis, d). Its use was first discovered 
by Audouin, and described by Huber (68), but it 
was more particularly studied and described by Sie- 
bold (153), and its true significance pointed out. It 
receives and holds the millions of spermatozoa de- 
rived from the drone, and is large enough to be seen 
with the naked eye, being about the size of a grain of 
