DRONES. 



145 



DRONES. 



come from all the ant-hiils for, we should say, 

 miles around; the result was, as you see, 

 that there was hardly a possibility of insects 

 from the same family meeting. JSTow, is 

 there any other way in which the strain of 

 blood could be so effectually crossed with 

 that of some distant colony as by this huge 

 jubilee of both sexes V 



Queen-ants, like queen - bees, seldom if 

 ever come out of their homes at any other 

 time, and, as if by some preconcerted ar- 

 rangement, they meet and mix up apparent- 

 ly for the very pm-pose of effectually pre- 

 venting ''in-and-in breeding,'' as it is usual- 

 ly termed when applied to stock. Do queens 

 and drone-bees meet in the same way, in 

 vast numbers V There seems to be no doubt 

 about it, as all known facts point that way. 

 Drones have been seen in places in larger 

 numbers than we would think could possibly 

 come from one hive ; and many have heard 

 their loud humming who have not seen 

 them. The fact that a queen should become 

 fertilized in so short a time after leaving the 

 hive seems strange, miless it really is a fact 

 that she is called to the swarm of drones 

 by their loud humming, which she would 

 instinctively recognize from a long dis- 

 tance. Flying among them she meets the 

 drone face to face, falls to the ground, tears 

 herself loose from lier dead mate by whirl- 

 ing, and then returns to her liive. having 

 been absent only a few minutes. 



DOES THE DRONE HAVE ONLY ONE PARENTV 



One of the most wonderful things about 

 the drone, or male bee. is that it is hatched 

 from an egg that is unimpregnated. So 

 wonderful indeed is tliis that the matter 

 was for ages disputed, and is even now, 

 by many who have not looked into the mat- 

 ter and examined the evidence. What we 

 mean by imimpregnated is, that queens that 

 have never met the male bee at all will lay 

 eggs, and these eggs will hatch, but they al- 

 ways produce drones, and never workers. 

 Those who have had the care of poultry are 

 Avell aware that the hens will lay eggs right 

 along, if no cock is kept in the yard at all ; 

 and. if we are not mistaken, a pullet would 

 commence and lay her full quota of eggs, 

 if she had never seen a male bird. Nom% 

 nearly the same is true with regard to 

 the queen-bee. If she fails to meet a 

 drone diu'ing the first thirty days of her 

 life, she usually begins to lay eggs : but 

 she seldom lays as many, or with the same 

 regularity, as a fertile queen. The eggs a 

 hen lays, if she is allowed to sit, never pro- 

 duce any chicks at all. The eggs laid by a 



queen, under the same circumstances, as we 

 have said before, always produce drones. 

 There is one more fact connected with the 

 common fowl : If a male bird is put into 

 the yard with the hen for one day only, good 

 fertile eggs will be laid for many days, pos- 

 sibly a whole laying. If a Black-Spanish 

 cock should get among a flock of white hens 

 for only a single day, all the eggs laid for 

 many days afterward will produce chicks 

 with more or less black feathers on them. 

 We give these statements from actual facts. 

 The point we wish you to observe is, that the 

 eggs of even the common fowl are fertil- 

 ized as they are laid by the hen, or possi- 

 bly a few days before. With the fowls, one 

 meeting with the male bird suffices for the 

 fertilization of an egg daily, for a week or 

 more ; with the queen-bee, for her whole life 

 of three or even four years. 



We do not know whether the hen has the 

 power of laying fertile or unfertile eggs at 

 will or not; probably not; but we do know 

 that a queen-bee lays both fertilized and 

 unfertilized eggs, alternating from one kind 

 to the other in rapid succession. Ski Ifiil 

 microscopists have carefully dissected eggs 

 from worker - cells, and found the living 

 spermatozoa in numbers from one to five. 

 These living spermatozoa were precisely 

 identical with those found in dissecting a 

 mature drone. Again: Every egg a queen 

 lays passes a little sac containing a minute 

 quantity of some fluid; the microscope 

 shows that this fluid contains thousands of 

 these spermatozoa. Is it not wonderful that 

 these spermatozoa should live four years or 

 more in this little sac, awaiting tlieir turu 

 to be developed into a higher life whenever 

 they should be required to fertilize the egg 

 that is to produce a worker- bee ? A'ery well; 

 now the egg that is taken from a drone-cell 

 contains no trace of spermatozoa. There- 

 fore it, like the vmimpregnated egg of the 

 common fowl, should never hatch. Strange 

 to say, it does hatch, and produce the drone. 

 The first glimpse we get of the little l)it of 

 animated nature is the tiny speck alive at 

 the bottom of tlie cell. Does he grow out of 

 nothing, without parentage, at least on the 

 paternal side? If his mother was an Italian, 

 he is also an Italian ; if a black queen, he is 

 also a black. We shall have to conclude, 

 perhaps, that he is the son of his mother, and 

 nothing more. The egg that has never been 

 impregnated in the usiial way. must, after 

 all, have some living germ incor])orated in 

 its make-up. and this germ must come only 

 from the mother. The great skill and pro- 



