_Experiment 4._--We set two virgin queens at liberty on the twentieth. The first had been abroad on the preceding days, but the scarcity of males prevented her from being previously fecundated. She returned with the organs of a male. We tried to prevent her from extracting them, but she did this so expeditiously with her feet, that we could not accomplish it. She was then allowed to enter the hive.
The second queen departed twice. Her first absence was short as usual; the second lasted about half an hour, and she returned impregnated. Having killed her as suddenly as possible, we laid open the vulva. The lenticular body was deposited as in every queen hitherto dissected; the pincers were situated under the excretory canal. Some parts not easily distinguishable were pressed between the laminæ, and their office seemed to consist in forcing the extremity of the lentil to approach the orifice of the vagina, and apply so forcibly to it that some exertion was necessary to separate them. We previously examined them, with a very powerful magnifier. Then a peculiarity which had escaped us was perceptible. In drawing out the lenticular body, there proceeded from the vagina a minute part, v. adhering to the posterior end of the lentil, and situated below the plates. It spontaneously retracted into the lentil, like the horns of a snail. It appeared white, very short, and cylindrical. Under the pincers was a little half coagulated seminal fluid at the bottom of the vulva. Though much could be expressed, there was none pure; it was almost liquid, but soon coagulated, and formed a whitish inorganic mass. This observation carefully made removed all our doubts, and demonstrated that what we had taken for the penis of males was nothing but the seminal fluid, which had coagulated and assumed the interior figure of the vagina. The only hard part introduced by the male, was the short cylindrical point which retracted into the lentil, when we separated it. Its situation and office prove that it is there we must look for the issue of the seminal fluid, if we can hope to find an opening, when not engaged in copulation.
We found this new part in the first drone we dissected. By pressing the seminal vessels, the white liquid then escaped downwards to the root of the penis r. and into the lenticular body, l. i. which became sensibly swoln. We prevented the fluid from returning, and by new pressure of the lentil forced it to advance. However, none escaped, but we saw at the posterior end of the lenticular body, and under the scaly pincers, a small white cylindrical substance, the same in appearance as that we had found engaged in the vagina of the queen. This part retracted on pressure, and then returned.