NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HONEY-BEE. 
41 
unusual excitement, and the whole colony were almost as 
much agitated as though they were swarming. After she 
had been in the second hive a short time, I found that she 
had laid a number of drone-eggs. They were deposited 
near the bottom and edge of the comb, in cells a little 
larger than the worker-size, and which the bees had begun 
to lengthen, to adapt them to the growth of their occu¬ 
pants. There was no other brood in the hive. On the 
9th of August, I found the combs nearly filled with 
worker-brood, in a state considerably less advanced than 
the drones. Is there any reason to doubt that these 
drone-eggs were laid by the queen before, and the worker- 
eggs after, her impregnation ? 
In Italy there is a variety of the honey-bee differing in 
size and color from the common kind. If a queen of this 
variety is crossed with the common drones, her drone- 
progeny will be Italian , and her worker brood a cross 
between the two; thus showing that the kind of drones 
she will produce has no dependence on the male by which 
she is fecundated. 
It appears from recent discoveries in physiology, that to 
impregnate the ovum of an animal it is necessary that the 
spermatozoa should not simply come in contact with it, 
but actually enter into it through a small opening. In 
applying this discovery to bees, Prof. Siebold, of Germany, 
dissected a number of worker-eggs, and found in each 
from one to three spermatozoa; while he found none in 
dissecting drone-eggs. 
Dr. Donhoff, of Germany, in the Summer 1855, reared 
a worker-larvae from a drone-egg,* which he had artifi 
daily impregnated. 
* I attempted to do this in 1852 ; but to my great disappointment, tlio bees ro 
moved or devoured all the eggs thus treated ; owing as I then supposed to their 
unwillingness to raiso workers in drone-cells. If some of tho eggs just deposited 
In a pi^co ol drono comb are touchod with a flue brush dipped in tho dilutod semen 
