THE SOCIAL INSECTS 



DRONES AND THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT 



The drones are produced right through the summer, the 

 season of the honey-flow, and leave the hive only on warm 

 days. Their single function is to fertilise the queens, of their 

 own or of some other colony. Fertilisation takes place only 

 in the air, a swarm of drones following the virgin queen as 

 she flies upwards. The male is always killed in the act of 

 fertilisation, since he can eject the sperm only by generating 

 great pressure in his abdomen with the aid of muscles and of 

 the fluid pressure of his blood. Under this pressure, the 

 hinder part of his genital system is forced out and is left 

 behind in the body of the queen. The pair then fall to the 

 ground and the queen pulls herself away and returns to the 

 hive, leaving the dead male behind. The remains of the male 

 genital system, from which all the sperm will have passed 

 into the queen, are removed from the end of her abdomen, 

 some hours later, either by the queen herself or by workers. 



This natural pairing is necessarily uncontrolled, and the 

 male will belong to any variety which happens to be flying at 

 the time. To improve their stock beekeepers have recently 

 developed a process of artificial insemination by which care- 

 fully chosen queens and drones can be crossed. Sperm are 

 removed from the male with a fine syringe. Then while the 

 queen is held in a clip under a binocular miscroscope, her 

 genital orifice is held open with small hooks and the sperm 

 are injected into her. This makes selected high grade queens 

 available to all beekeepers. To use such a queen, the old 

 queen must be removed from the hive and the new queen 

 introduced. Such a stranger would be attacked if precautions 

 are not taken. Usually she is introduced in a small cage which 

 protects her until she is thought to have acquired the nest 

 smell. She is then allowed out into the hive. 



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