No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 687 



tion except that the queen is not yet ready to perform her duties, 

 and she will receive our attention now. A very young queen re- 

 ceives little attention from the workers, but goes about the combs 

 practically unattended. When about five days old (the exact time 

 depending on the weather), in the afternoon, the virgin queen flies 

 from the hive to mate with a drone. She first takes several short, 

 preparatory flights to get her hive located so that she may find 

 it on her return, and finally she flies upward in constantly enlarging 

 circles, high in the air. Thus far she may be easily followed; but 

 few have been fortunate enough to observe the actual mating. Some- 

 times the mating takes place at a lower point, and a few men have 

 recorded the fact of witnessing the completion of the mating flight. 

 The queen, on leaving the hive, in some way attracts a great many 

 drones to her from all parts of the apiary, provided her hive is 

 located in a bee-yard, and the swiftest and strongest is successful 

 in the race. The other drones often follow the queen back to her 

 hive, and for an hour or two remain on the outside of the hive after 

 she has entered, but later thev return to their former hives. 



The queen returns from the mating-tlight in about half an hour, 

 carrying with her the generative organs of the male, which is killed 

 during the union of the two. Near the posterior end of the queen 

 is a small sac, which, before the flight, is filled with a clear liquid, 

 but after her return this sac is filled with an opaque fluid; and it is 

 the reception of this opaque substance which is the essential thing 

 in mating. This liquid contains millions of spermatozoa, or male 

 sex cells, each one of which is capable of fertilizing an egg as it 

 glides past the opening of the sac. This supply of spermatozoa is 

 almost always sufficient to supply the eggs laid by a queen for three 

 or four years — it rarely happening that she mates a second time 

 before laying. Since a queen can, during her lifetime, lay a total 

 of 500,000 eggs, most of which receive one of these spermatozoa, it 

 will be seen that the apparatus for preserving them is very perfect, 

 since the queen cannot generate more, and they do not divide or 

 increase in number in any way. 



The mating of queen and drone never occurs in the hive, but 

 always in the air, on the wing. This fact prevents what is known 

 as in-and-in-breeding; for, if the queen mated in her hive she would 

 receive spermatozoa from her brothers, and we know that such 

 close breeding is undesirable in all forms of life. The cause of the 

 undesirable results of in-breeding are yet a mystery; but we do 

 know that they follow, and this habit of the queen of mating out- 

 side the hive renders close crossing less probable*. After the queen 

 has returned to her hive, the workers remove the male organs. These 

 parts of the male are not absorbed by the queen, as is sometimes 

 claimed; but the spermatozoa contained in them are taken into the 

 spermatheca and the rest dries up and is removed. Almost as 

 soon as the queen returns from her flight there is a difference in the 

 treatment which she receives from the workers. It happens at 

 times that she is not received kindly after taking her flight, and 

 may be killed by the workers, which do not recognize her as their 

 queen, probably on account of some new odor which she has ac- 

 quired during her absence. This is rare, however, for ordinarily 

 she is the object of much attention on her return. From this time 

 on, whenever she stops for a moment on the comb, either to deposit 



