SWARMING AND HIVING. 
127 
so firmly to her body, that it could not be iemoved 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 
Wellsboro’, 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 tic 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. 54) “ was made by 
Berlepsch, in order to confirm the drone-productiveness of a virgin queen, lie 
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 keep 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 tboso 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 fresh state, and the spermatozoids active, 
nnd, 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 three years before this examination of Leuckart. 
Prof. Slobold, in 1843, examined the spermatheca of the quoen-bco, and found It 
after copulation, filled with the seminal fluid of the drone. At that time, Api¬ 
arians paid no attention to his views, but considered them, as ho says, to bo only 
“ theoretical stuff." It seems, then, that Prof. Leidy’s dissection (pp. 84, 85) was 
not, as I had hitherto supposed, the first, of an impregnated spermatheca. 
* Dzlerzon supposes that the sound of tho queen's wings, when she is in the 
air, excites the drones. In the interior of tho hive, they are never seen to optics 
