14 THE ORIGIN OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CHILDREN 
The story of the bee is an interesting illustration of mating. 
The hatching of a queen bee is a great event in a hive. The 
young queen runs fussily about the hive for a time and then 
launches out on what is called the marriage flight. As she 
rises in the air the drones, the males, who are waiting for her 
outside the hive and on the bushes about, pursue her. She 
swiftly flies higher and higher, the suitors straggling after. 
Finally one of her pursuers overtakes her and mates with her 
in the air. After the queen has received the spermatozoa 
from the male, she tears herself away from him and returns 
to the hive. Thereafter she lives within the seclusion of the 
hive, at intervals laying batches of thousands of eggs, which 
are fertilized as they are laid, by the spermatozoa that she 
received from the drone in her marriage flight and which are 
kept stored in a little sack in her abdomen, stored sometimes 
for two or three years. 
Birds mate frequently, perhaps for each egg that is laid. 
In the hen there is a long coiled tube ( oviduct ) leading from 
the ovary to the outside. The yolk of the egg, with the germ 
cell at its surface, is produced in the ovary. As it passes 
down the oviduct the white of the egg and the shell are 
added. Since the sperms cannot penetrate through the 
shell and white to reach the germ cell, the egg must be 
fertilized at the upper end of the tube. In mating the 
rooster deposits the spermatozoa in the external opening of 
the oviduct, and the active little sperms swim along the 
moist lining of the tube to meet the egg as it leaves the 
ovary. 
1. How do land animals bring the sperms to the egg cells? 
2. Describe the marriage flight of the bee. 
3. How is the queen bee able to lay fertile eggs two years after 
her single mating with a drone ? 
4. How do the fowl’s spermatozoa reach the egg cell ? 
5. Why does the rooster mate with the hen just after she has laid 
an egg? 
