QUEEN ORGANS. 
139 
epithelial cells of the spermatheca. In an impreg- 
nated queen, on the contrary, the contents of the 
spermatheca are opaque and milky white, being filled 
with an enormous number of mobile threads (sper- 
matozoa), identical with those of the drone, described 
on page 127. 
As a fertile queen advances in age the number of 
spermatozoa decrease, and the spermatheca will be 
seen only partly filled. Leuckart says the spermatheca 
may contain 25,000,000 spermatozoa, and as its con- 
tents have to last during the whole lifetime of the 
queen, she is able to economise them and give them 
up just as needed for fertilising the eggs. A queen 
may lay for four or five years, but her fertility de- 
creases in proportion to the number of eggs she lays. 
We have found queens at the end of three years hav- 
ing so few spermatozoa that they rarely, if at all, 
fertilised the eggs, and consequently became drone 
breeders. It is many years ago since we first pointed 
out that with our system of stimulation and forcing 
queens to lay a large number of eggs, after the 
second year the fertility of the queen decreases, and 
she becomes no longer profitable to the bee-keeper ; 
hence we have always advocated the rearing of young 
queens to supersede old ones. This experience of ours 
would also show that the number of spermatozoa as 
given by Leuckart is excessive, or that there is great 
waste in their use. We must now explain how the 
spermatozoa are forced into the spermatheca. When 
the inversion of the male organ takes place the horns 
are forced into the bursa copulatrix (Fig. 55, //"), which 
