Copy 2, Volume 5

The study of medicine. Containing all the author's ... improvements / [John Mason Good].

  • Good, John Mason, 1764-1827.
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study of medicine. Containing all the author's ... improvements / [John Mason Good]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/762 (page 5)
    for this purpose by the general consent of the hive on the accidental loss of a queen-bee, or common bearer of the ! whole, and in order to supply her place. It is these alone that are armed with stings; for the males, or drones, as we | commonly call them, are without stings; they are much larger than the non-breeders or vent locive of a darker colour, and make a great buz in flying. They are always less numerous in a hive than the workers, and only serve to ensure the impregnation of the few young queens that may be produced in the course of the season, and are regularly massacred by the stings of the workers in the beginning of the autumn. The impregnation of the-queen-bee is pro- duced by a process too curious to be passed over. It was conjectured by Swammerdam, that this was affected by an aura seminalis thrown forth from the body of the whole of the drones or males collectively. By other naturalists it has been said, but erroneously, to take place from an inter- mixture of a male milt or sperm with the eggs or spawn of the queen-bee, as in the case of fishes. M. Hiiber, how- ever, has sufficiently proved, that the queen-bee for this purpose forms an actual coition, and this never in the hive, but during a tour into the air, which she takes for this purpose, a few days only after her birth, and, in the course of which, she is sure to meet with some one or other of her numerous seraglio of males. As soon as copulation has been effected,.she returns to the hive, which is usually in the space of about half an hour, and often bears home with her the full proofs of a connexion in the ipsa verenda of the drone; who thus wounded and deprived of his virility by the violence of his embrace, dies almost immediately after- wards. This single impregnation will serve to fecundate all the eggs the queen will lay for two years at least; Huber believes for the whole of her life; but he has had repeated proofs-of the former. She begins to lay her eggs, for the bee is unquestionably oviparous, forty-six hours after im- pregnation, and will commonly lay about three thousand in _ two months, or at the rate of fifty eggs daily. For the first eleven months, she lays none but the eggs of workers; after which she commences a second laying, which consists of drones’ eggs alone. Of the mode of procreation among fishes, in consequence of their living in a different element from our own, we Crass V. I, Ma- chinery of the genera- tive func- Procreation among fishes.