If the queen be observed after a successful "wedding tour," she will
be seen to bear the marks of success in the pendant drone appendages,
consisting of the penis, the yellow cul-de-sacks, and the hanging
thread-like ducts.
It is not at all likely that a queen, after she has met a drone, ever
leaves the hive again except that she leaves with a swarm. Some of the
observing apiarists think that an old queen may be again impregnated.
The fact that queens, with clipped wings, are as long fertile as
others, makes me think that cases which have led to such conclusions
are capable of other explanation.
If the queen lays eggs before meeting the drones, or if for any reason
she fails to mate, her eggs will only produce male bees. This strange
anomaly--development of the eggs without impregnation--was discovered
and proved by Dzierzon, in 1845. Dr. Dzierzon, who, as a student of
practical and scientific apiculture, must rank with the great Huber, is
a Roman Catholic priest of Carlesmarkt, Germany. This doctrine--called
parthenogenesis, which means produced from a virgin--is still doubted
by some quite able bee-keepers, though the proofs are irrefragable:
1st. Unmated queens will lay eggs that will develop, but drones always
result. 2d. Old queens often become drone-layers, but examination shows
that the spermatheca is void of seminal fluid. Such an examination
was first made by Prof. Siebold, the great German anatomist, in 1813,
and later by Leuckart and Leidy. I have myself made several such
examinations. The spermatheca can easily be seen by the unaided vision,
and by crushing it on a glass slide, by compressing with a thin glass
cover, the difference between the contained fluid in the virgin and
impregnated queen is very patent, even with a low power. In the latter
it is more viscid and yellow, and the vesicle more distended. By use
of a high power, the active spermatozoa or germ-cells become visible.
3d. Eggs in drone-cells are found by the microscopist to be void of the
sperm-cells, which are always found in all other fresh-laid eggs. This
most convincing, and interesting observation, was first made by Von
Siebold, at the suggestion of Berlepsch. It is quite difficult to show
this. Leuckart tried before Von Siebold, at Berlepsch's apiary, but
failed. I have also tried to discover these germ-cells in worker-eggs,
but as yet have been unsuccessful. Siebold has noted the same facts in
eggs of wasps. 4th. Dr. Dönhoff, of Germany, in 1855, took an egg from
a drone-cell, and by artificial impregnation produced a worker-bee.
Such an operation, to be successful, must be performed as soon as the
egg is laid.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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