BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
passed by me, so near that **I** struck them\(\cdot\)down with my hand-kerehief. I then discovered that this bitter battle was but a love-suit. The two insects, stunned and motionless, were coupled. The copulation had taken place in the afr, at the instant when I had seen one of them falling on the other, twenty or twenty-five feet above the ground.
"It was a queen-bee and a drone. Persuaded that I had killed them, I made no scruple of pierening them both with the same pin. But the pain recalled them to life again, and they promptly separated. This separation was violent, and resulted in the tearing off of the drone's organ (**188**) which remained attached to the queen. The queen was yet alive on the following morning. For some time after her separation from the drone, she brushed the last ring of her abdomen, as though trying to extract the organ of the drone. She endeavored to bend herself, probably in order to bring this part\(\cdot\)within reach of her jaws, which were constantly moving, but the pin pre-*ented her from attaining her aim. Her aetivity soon decreased, and she ceased to move."--(Alex. Levi, Journal Des Fermes, Paris, 1869.)
Messrs. Cary and Otis had witnessed a similar oceurrence in July, 1861. (_American Bee Journal,_ Vol. I, page 66.)
**124.** It is now well demonstrated that in a single mating, a queen is fertilized for life, although in a few rare instances they have been said to mate two days in succession, perhaps because the first mating was insufficient.
**125.** After the queen has re-entered the hive, she gets rid of the organ of the drone by drawing it with her elaws, and she is sometimes helped in this work by the worker-bees. The drone dies in the act of fertilization. (**188**.)
**126.** Although fertilization of the queen in confinement has been tried by many, it has never been successful. Those who, from time to time, claimed to have succeeded were evidently deceiving themselves through ill-made experiments. (**187**.)
**127.** Having ascertained that the queen-bee is feeundated in the open air and on the wing, Huber still could not form any satisfactory conjecture how eggs were fertilizedwhich were not yet developed in her ovaries. Years ago, the celebrated Dr. John Hunter (1792), and others, supposed that there must be a permanent receptacle for the male sperm, opening int\(\bullet\) the oviduct. Dzierzon, who must be regarded as one of the abtest contributors of modern times to apiarian science, maintained this opinion, and stated that be had found such a receptacle filled with a fluid resembling the semen of the drones. He does not seem to have then demonstrated his discoveries by any misexoepie examinations.
**128**. In the Winter of 1851-2, the writer submitted for scientific examination several queen-bees to Dr. Joseph Leidy, of Philadelphia, who had the highest reputation both at home and abroad, as a naturalist and misexoepie anatomist. He found, in making his disseections, a small globular sae, about 1-38 of an inch in diameter, communicating with the oviduct, and filled with a whitish fluid; this fluid, when examined under the misexoepie, abounded in the spermatozoids, the living germs which characterize the seminal fluid. A comparison of this substance, later in the season, with the semen of a drone, proved them to be exactly alike. Pruff. Siebold, in 1843, examined the spermatheca of the queen-bee, and found it after copulation, filled with the seminal fluid of the drone. At that time, Apiarists paid no attention to his views, but considered them, as he says, to be only "_theoretical stuff._" It scous, then, that Prof. Leidy's dissection was not, as we had hitherto supposed, the first, of an impregnated spermatheca.
**129**. These examinations have settled, on the impregnable basis of demonstration, the muller in which the eggs of the queen are freundated. In descending the oviduct to be deposited in the cells, they pass by the mouth of this seminal sac, or "_spermatheca,_" and receive a portion of its fertilizing contents. Small as it is, it contains sufficient to impregnate millions of eggs. In precisely the same way, the mother-wasps and hornets are freundated. The females only of these insects survive the Winter, and often a single one begins the construction of a nest, in which at first only a few eggs are deposited. How could these eggs hatch, if the females
had not been impregnated the previous season? Dissection proves that they have a spermatheca similar to that of the queen-bee. It never seems to have occurred to the opponents of Huber, that the existence of a permanently-impregnated mother-wasp is quite as difficult to be accounted for, as the existence of a similarly impregnated queen-bee.
**130.** The celebrated Swammerdam, in his observations upon insects, made in the latter part of the seventeenth century, has given a highly magnified drawing of the ovaries of the queen-bee, a reduced copy of which we present (Plate 10) to our readers. The small globular sae (\(D\)), communicating with the oviduet (\(E\)), which he thought seereted a fluid for stielking the eggs to the base of the cells, is the seminal reservoir, or spermatheea. Any one who will carefully dissect a queen-bee, may see this sac, even with the naked eye.
It will be seen that the ovaries (\(G\) and \(H\)) are double, each consisting of an amazing number of duets filled with eggs, which gradually increase in size. Since the first edition of this work was issued, we have ascertained that Posel (page 54) describes the oviduet of the queen, the spermatheca and its contents, and the use of the latter in impregnating the passing egg. His work was published at Munieh, in 1784. It seems also from his work ("A Complete Treatise of Forest and Hortieultural Bee-Culture," page 36), that before the investigations of Huber, Jansla, the bee-keeper royal of Maria Theresa, had discovered the fact that the young queens leave their hive in search of the drones.
**131.** Huber, while experimenting to ascertain how the queen was feeundated, confined some young ones to their hives by contracting the entrances, so that they were more than three weeks old before they could go in search of the drones. To his amazement, the queens whose impregnation was thus retarded never laid any eggs but such as produced drones!
He tried this experiment repeatedly, but always with the same result. Bee-keepers, even from the time of Aristotle, had observed that all the brood in a hive were oceasionally drones,
**132**. Dzienzon appears to have been the first to ascertain the truth on this subject; and his discovery must certainly be ranked among the most astonishing faets in all the range of animated nature.
Dzienzon asserted that _all impregnated eggs produce females, either reorders or qucruss; and all unimpregnated ones, males, or drones;_ He stated that in several, of his hives he found drone-laying queens, whose wings were so imperfect that they could not fly, and which, on examination, proved to be unfeeundated. Hence, he concluded that the eggs laid by an unimpregnated queen-bee had sufficient vitality to produce drones.
**133**. _Partheiosynchesis_, meaning "generation of a virgin," is the name given to this faculty of a female, to produce offspring without having been fecundated, and is not at all rare among insects.
**134**. In the Autumn of 1852, our assistant found a young queen whose progeny consisted entirely of drones. The colony had been formed by removing a few eonbs containing bees, brood, and eggs, from another hive, and had raised a new queen. Some eggs were found in one of the eonbs, and young bees were already emerging from the cells, all of which were drones. As there were none but worker-cells in the hive, they were reared in them, and not having space for full development, they were dwarfed in size, although the bees had pieced the cells to give more room to their occupants.
We were not only surprised to find drones reared in worker-cells, but equally so that a young queen, who at first lays only the eggs of workers, should be laying drone-eggs; and at once conjectured that this was a case of an unimpregnated drone-laying queen, sufficient time not having elapsed for her impregnation to be unnaturally retarded. All necessary precautions were taken to determine this point. The queen was removed from the hive, and although her wings appeared to be perfect, she could not fly. It seemed probable, therefore, that she had never been able to leave the hive for impregnation.
**135.** To settle the question beyond the possibility of doubt, we submitted this queen to Professor Leidy for mieroscopie examination. The following is an extract from his report: "The ovaries were filled with eggs, the poison-sae full of fluid ; and the spermatheca distended with a perfectly colorless, transparent, viseid liquid, _without a trace of spermatazoids._"
**136.** On examining this same colony a few days later, we found satisfactory evidence that these drone-eggs were laid by the queen which had been removed. No fresh eggs had been deposited in the cells, and the bees on missing her had begun to build royal cells, to rear, if possible, another queen. Two of the royal cells were in a short time discontinued; while a third was sealed over in the usual way, to undergo its changes to a perfect queen. As the bees had only a drone-laying queen, whence came the female egg from which they were rearing a queen?
At first we imagined that they might have stolen it from another live; but on opening this cell it contained only _a dead drone!_ Huber had described a similar mistake made by some of his bees. At the base of this cell was an unusual quantity of the peculiar jelly fed to develop young queens. One might almost imagine that the bees had dosed the unfortunate drone to death; as though they had hoped by such liberal feeding to produce a change in his sexual organization.
**137.** In the Summer of 1854, we found another drone-laying queen in our Apiary, with wings so _shrivelled_ that she could not fly. We gave her successively to several queenless colonies, in all of which she deposited only drone-eggs.
**138.** 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-pro-eny will be _Italian_ (**551**), and her worker-brood a cross between the two; thus showing that the kind of drones she will produce has no dependenee on the male by which she is fecundated.
"The following interesting experiment was made by Berlepsch, in order to confirm the drone-productiveness of a virgin queen. He contrived the confinement of queens at the end of September, 1554, 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 be exactly of the same nature as those found in virgin queens. The seminal receptacle in such females never contains semen-masses, with their characteristic spermatazoids, but only a limpid fluid destitute of cells and granules which is produced from the two appendieular 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 spermatazoids active, and, consequently, capable of impregnation."--(Siebold, "Parthenogenesis,")
**139.** Again, to prove that Dzierzon was right, Professor Von Siebold, in 1853, dissected several eggs at the Apiary of Baron Von Berlepsch, and he found spermatazoids in every female egg, or egg laid in worker-cell, but although he examined thirty-two male eggs, or eggs laid in drone-cells, he could not discover a simple spermatazoid either in or around them. In the act of compilation, the sperm of the drone is received into the spermatalcea (Plate 10, \(D\)), which is placed near and can empty itself into the oviduct. When an egg passes by the spermatheea, if the circumstances are such that a few spermatazoids empty out of the bag on the egg, the sex of it is changed from male to female.
It appears that there is in each egg a small opening called nieroype, through which the living spermatazoids enter, when the circumstances are such that a few of them can slip out of the seminal bag and slide into the oviduct. Such is the process of impregnation.
**110.** Aristotle noticed, more than 2,000 years ago, that
the eggs which produce drones are like the worker-eeggs. With the aid of powerful uieroseopes we are still unable to detect any difference in the size or outside appearance of the eggs of the queen.
**141**. These faets, taken in connection, constitute a perfect demonstration that unfieeundated queens are not only able to lay eggs, but that their eggs have sufficient vitality to produce drones.
It seems to us probable, that after feeundation has been delayed for about three weeks, the organs of the queen-bee are in such a condition that it can no longer be effected; just as the parts of a flower, after a certain time, either and shut up, and the plant becomes incapable of fructification. Perhaps, after a certain time, the queen loses all desire to go in search of the male.
There is something analogous to these wonders in the "_aphilcs_" or green lice, which infest plants. We have undoubted evidence that a feeundated female gives birth to other females, and they in turn to others, all of which without impregnation are able to bring forth young; until, after a number of generations, perfect males and females are produced, and the series starts anew!
However improbable it may appear that an unimpregnated egg can give birth to a living being, or that sex can depend on impregnation, we are not at liberty to reject facts because we cannot comprehend the reasons of them. He who allows himself to be guilty of such folly, if he aims to be consistent, must eventually be plunged into the dreavy gulf of atheism. Common sense, philosophy, and religion alike teaeli us to receive, with becoming reverence, all undoubted facts, whether in the natural or spiritual world; assured that however mysterious they may appear to us, they are beautifully consistent in the sight of Him whose "understanding is infinite."
**142**. It had long been known that the queen deposits drone-eggs in the large or drone-cells, and worker-eggs in the small or worker-cells (fig 47), and that she usually makes no mistakes. Dzierzon inferred, therefore, that there was some way in which she was able to decide the sex of the egg before it was laid, and that she must have such control over the mouth of the seminal sac as to be able to extrude her eggs, allowing then at will to receive or not a portion of its fertilizing contents. In this way he thought she determined their sex, according to the size of the eells in which she laid them.
**143.** Mr. Samuel Wagner had advanced a highly ingenious theory, which accounted for all the facts, without admitting that the queen had any special knowledge or will on the subject. He supposed that, when she deposited her eggs in the worker-cells, her body was slightly compressed by their size, thus causing the eggs as they passed the sperm-theta to receive its vivifying influence.
**144.** But this theory was overthrown by the fact that the queen sometimes lays eggs in cells that are built only to a third of their length, whether worker-cells or drone-cells, and in which no compression can take place. Yet, it is very difficult to admit that the queen is endowed with a faculty that no other animal possesses, that of knowing and deciding the sex of her progeny beforehand. It seems to us that she must be guided by her insinct like all other beings, for she always begins, in the Spring, by laying in small cells, using large cells only when no others are in reach in the warm part of the live. Sometimes, however, when she is very heavy with eggs, she lays in drone-cells as she comes to then, and will sometimes seek them. Usually it is only when the live is warm throughout, and worker-cells all occupied, that she fills the unoccupied drone-cells. This has given rise to the popular theory that the bees ruinw drones whenever they intend to swarm. It is possible that the width of the cells and the position of her legs when laying in drone-cells (**224**) prevents the action of the muscles of her spennateca.
**145**. The preference of the queen for worker-eeils can not be disputed. If all the drone-combs are removed from a hive and replaced with worker-combs, she will not show any displeasure. She will live in that hive for years, without laying any drone-eggs, except, perhaps, here and there, in odd-shaped junction-cells. Mr. A. I. Root makes the same remark:
''By having a hive furnished entirely with worker-comb, we can so nearly prevent the production of drones, that it is safe enough to call it a complete remedy.''--(''A B C of Bee Culture,'' 1883.)
**146**. If, on the other hand, we furnish a swarm with nothing but drone-comb, already built, they would soon leave the hive. But, if a few worker-cells are among the drone-cells, the queen will find them and will lay in them. On this subject, Mr. Root says:
**147**. ''Bees sometimes rear worker-broad in drone-comb when compelled to from want of room, and they always do it by contracting the mouth of the cells, and leaving the young bee a rather large berth in which to grow and develop.'' ''If you give a young laying queen a hive supplied only with drone-combs, she will rear worker-broad in these drone-cells. The mouth of the cells will be contracted with wax as meutioned before.''
**148**. An experiment, made in Bordeaux, under the supervision of Mr. Drory, editor of the ''_Rucher,''_ has proven that the queen may lay worker-eggs in drone-cells. A piece of drone-comb containing worker-broad, was sent us by him. The eggs were laid irregularly and the mouth of the eells had been contracted, as mentioned by Mr. Root. This contraretion of the cell mouth seems indispensable to enable the queen to put in motion the muscles of her spermatheca.
**149**. We will add, with Mr. Root, that in the Spring, or late in the Fall, when the crop is not abundant, the queen will travel over drone-combs without depositing a single egg in them. Even by feeding the colony, when in these conditions, the queen cannot be readily induced to lay in drone-cells. Our conclusions on this point differ from those of Mr. Rout. We think that the queen prefers worker-cells to drone-cells, because the foundation of the eggs by the action of the muscles of the spermatheca probably gives her a pleasant sensation, which she does not experience in laying drone-egg.
**150.** Some very prolific queens occasionally lay drone-egg in worker-cells. It may be due to fatigue. This will readily be admitted when we consider the number of eggs laid in one day. (**9S**.)
**151.** Dizerzon found that a queen which had been _refriger-careful_ for a long time, after being brought to life by warmth, laid only male eggs, whilst previously she had also laid female eggs. Berlepsch refrigerated three queens by placing them thirty-six hours in an ice-house. Two of them never revived, and the third laid, as before, thousands of eggs, but _from all of them only males were evolved_. In two instances, Mr. Malan has, at our suggestion, tried similar experiments, and with like results. A short exposure of a queen, to pounded ice and salt, answers every purpose. The spermatozoids are in some way rendered inoperative by severe cold.
**152**. The queen begins laying about two days after impregnation. She is seldom treated with much attention by the bees until after she has begun to replenish the cells with eggs; although if previously deprived of her, they show. by their despair, that they fully appreciated her importance to their welfare.
The extraordinary fertility of the queen-bee has already been noticed. The process of laying has been well described by the Rev. W. Dunbar, a Scotch Apiarist :
**153**. "When the queen is about to lay, she puts her head into a cell, and remains in that position for a second or two, to ascertain its fitness for the deposit she is about to make. She then withdraws her head, and curving her body downwards, inserts the lower part of it into the cell; in a few seconds she turns half round upon herself and withdraws, leaving an egg behind her.".
In the Winter, or early Spring, she lays first in the middle of the cluster, and continues in a circle, around the first eggs laid, till she has filled most of the warmed space. She then crosses over to the next comb and does the same thing ; as the bees always cluster on different combs in gronps exactly opposite, to produce the utmost possible concentration and economy of heat for developing the various changes of the brood.
**154**. Queens lay more or less according to, _1st_, The season ; _2nd_, The number of bees that keep up the heat of the brood-nest, and _3d_, The quantity of food which they eat. When bees harvest honey or pollen, or when these neecessaries are provided artificially by the Apiarist, they feed the queen as they pass by her, oftener than they would otherwise ; hence her laying increases in Spring, and decreases in Summer or Fall. It is certain that when the weather is uncongenial, or the colony too feeble to maintain sufficient heat, fewer eggs are matured, just as unfavorable circumstances diminish the number of eggs laid by the hen; and when the weather is very cold, the queen stops laying, in weak colonies.
In the latitude of Northern Massachusetts, we have found that the queen ordinarily ceases to lay some time in October; and begins again, in strong stocks, in the latter part of December. On the 14th of January, 1857 (the previous month having been very cold, the thermometer sometimes sinking to \(17^{\circ}\) below zero), we examined three hives, and found that the central combs in two contained \(e_{\rm crs}^{\rm curs}\) and unsealed broul; there were a few cells with sealed broul in the third. Strony stocks, even in the coldest eliminates, usually contain some brood ten months in the year.
**153. "Queens differ much as to the degree of their fertility. Those are best which deposit their eggs with uniform regularity, leaving no cells unsupplied--as the brood hatches at the same time on the same range of comb, which can be again supplied; the queen thus losing no time in searching for empty cells."--(Dizerzon.).**
In bee-life, as well as in human affairs, those who are systematic, ordinarily accomplish the most.
To test the difference of fecundity between queens, Mr. De Layeux, while transferring bees (574), in middle April, counted the eggs dropped on a black cloth (577), in forty minutes, by the queens of four different colonies. The poured queen dropped but one egg, the second twelve, the third eighteen, and the fourth twenty. On the fifteenth of July the colony of the first queen was very poor, the second was of average strength, and both the others were very strong.
**156. It is amusing to see how the supernumerary eggs of the queen are disposed of. If the workers are too few to take charge of all her eyes, if there is a deficiency of beehead to nourish the younger; or if, for any reason, she does not think best to deposit them in the cells, she stands upon a comb, and simply extrudes them from her evident, the workers' devoniring them as fast as they are laid.**
One who carefully watches the habits of bees will often feel inclined to speak of his little favorites as having an intelligence almost if not quite akin to reason; and we have sometimes queried, whether the workers who are so fond of a tit-bit in the shape of a newly-laid ezy ever experienced a struggle between appetite and duty; so that they must practice self-denial to refrain from breakfasting on the ezy. so temptingly deposited in the cells.