SWARMING AND HIVING. 
127 
so firmly to her body, that it could not be lemoved with¬ 
out tearing her to pieces. 
The following facts will show that the impregnation of 
the queen by the drone, in the open air, may be made a 
matter of ocular demonstration: Lewis Shrimplin, of 
WeUsboro’, Brook County, Virginia, purchased a mova¬ 
ble-comb hive, in the Spring of 1857, into which he put a 
second swarm. Finding, after a few days, that the bees 
had built a number of very straight combs, he called some 
of his neighbors together, to witness the ease with which 
he could take out, and replace their combs. While stand¬ 
ing in front of the hive, he saw the queen coming out, and 
the idea occurred to him to catch her, and tie a very fine 
silk thread to one of her thighs. This he accomplished 
successfully; and as she began to ascend,* the drones 
by which means these can act by pressure^ in the interior of the body of the bee, 
upon the neighboring penis which is to be protruded.’' 
“The following Interesting experiment” (Parthenogenesis, p. M) 11 was made by 
Berlepsch, in order to confirm the drone-productiveness of a virgin qneen. He 
contrived the exclusion of queens at the end of September, 1864, and, therefore, at 
a time when there was no longer any males; he was lucky enough to koep one of 
them through the Winter, and this produced drone-offspring on the 2d of March, in 
the following year, furnishing fifteen hundred cells with brood. That this drone¬ 
bearing queen remained a virgin, was proved by the dissection which Leuckart 
undertook, at the request of Berlepsch. He found the state and contents of the 
seminal pouch of this queen to bo exactly of the same nature as those found in 
virgin queens. The seminal receptacle in such females never contains semen- 
masses, with their characteristic spermatozoids, but only a limpid fluid, destitute 
of cells and granules, which is produced from the two appendicular glands of the 
seminal capsule; and, as I suppose, serves the purpose of keeping the semen 
transferred into the seminal capsule in a fVesh state, and the spermatozoids active, 
and, consequently, capable of impregnation.” 
By referring to pages 88, 89, the reader will see that Prof. Leidy dissected for 
mo a drone-laying queen, nearly throe years before this examination of Leuckart. 
Prof. Slebold, in 1848, examined the spermatheca of the queen-bee, and found it 
after copulation, filled with the seminal fluid of tho drone. At that time, Api¬ 
arians paid no attention to his views, but considered them, as he says, to be only 
"theoretical stuff." It seems, then, that Prof. Leldy’s dissection (pp. 84, 85) was 
not, as 1 had hlthovto supposed, tho first, of an impregnated spermatheca. 
* Dzterzon supposes that tho sound of the queen's wings, when slio is in the 
air, oxcites the drones. In the interior of the hive, they are never seen to notfea 
