REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 589 



of procreativenoss, and that the development and exercise of the procreative faculty 

 are under tlie control of the worker bees. 



First, there appeared to be drones of tlie impotent sort. If such be taken between 

 the thuml) and fini<er, no pressure short of crushing is sufficient to expel the sex or- 

 gan. When forced to position external to the body, or if removed by a dissection, 

 the organs are found to be nearly or quite empty, the few spermatozoa bemg massed 

 in a hard lump, and but little mucus being present, and tliat little watery and clear 

 and having no consisiency. 



Another sort of drones are those in which the mucus sxrrroimding the spermato- 

 zoa is thick and curdy. With this sort I have not been able to f erti lize a queen. 

 The procreative principle is present in. quantity, but the element in which it may be 

 Ulcerated and floated into the organs of the queen appears to be wanting. 



A third sort of drones are those in which the sex organs are completely filled with 

 spermatozoa and an abundant supply of albuminous fluid. It is only with this latter 

 sort that I have been able to succeed in fecundating queens. 



The facts observed seem to warrant the belief that it is the prerogative of the 

 worker bees to determine the degi-ee of development and dominate the function of 

 the drones as they do the succeeding generations of workers and queens, the supe- 

 rior intelligence of the workers ordering the entire economy of the hive. During 

 the first half of the severe and protracted drought of the past season I was able to 

 rear a few drones by resorting to the usual methods employed for stimulating drone- 

 rearing, but one-third of the entire number proved upon trial to be of the sort which 

 I believe to be impotent, and nearly all of the remaining two-thirds were of the sec- 

 ond class, not more than 5 or 10 per cent, of the entire number being furnished with 

 the albuminous liquid necessary to enable the drone to voluntai-ily perform the ex- 

 imlsion act and complete the function of copulation, the filling of the spermatheca 

 of the queen; for I am led to beUeve that the presence of tliis fluid, more than any 

 odor or other influence from the presence of the queen during orgasm, excites in 

 the naturally frigid fh'ones the sexual desire and assists in the execution of the ex- 

 pulsion act and furnishes the element in which the spermatozoa are fl.oated into the 

 spermatheca, and also that tlie workers intelUgently and purposely determine the 

 sexual development and dominate the fitness, the desii-e, and capacity of the drone, 

 as they do the physical development, the fitness, the desire, and capacity of worker 

 and queen bees for the natural performance of their individual functions; that is to 

 say, if drones are reared during a drought by artificially approximating the conditions 

 under which the desire for di'one-rearing normally arises, only a small percentage ft 

 the number vrill be sufliciently furnished with the food essential to complete sexual 

 development, the counterpart of which is seen in a less degree in the rearing of 

 worker larvaj; and, further, if there is a faflure of honey or if for any reason the 

 swarming impulse is absent and no emergency exists for the forming of a new col- 

 ony, very few of the sexually mature di'ones are suppUed with the food-elements 

 essential in producing the secretion which excites sexual desue and supphes the 

 agency by which the spermatozoa are freed and floated into the spermatheca, the 

 counterpart of which is seen in the refusal of the worker bees to copiously supply 

 the queen with the rich glandular secretion essential to oviproduction whenever then- 

 instinct warns them that ovipositing should cease and that further brood-rearing 

 would only be a waste of energy, resulting in a generation of consumers and non- 

 producers; for the queen is only a mother, and in no sense a naajesty; only a, ma- 

 chme, not a monarch. Other facts in my experience might be mentioned in support 

 of this belief. 



October 15, :Mr, Otis N. Baldwin, of ClarksvUle, Mo., wrote me that he had met 

 with success in practicing the method of fertilization described in my report of last 

 year and that he had discovered that drones were of three kinds, namely: " Dwarfed, 

 immatm-e, and ripe." As directed by your letter of instructions of November 5, I 

 went to Clarksville and interrogated ^Ir. Bald^vin concerning his experience and ob- 

 bcrvations, and I herewith give -the substance of his statement made in reply to my 

 questions. He said, " I first go to my nursery and take the queens and cage them. 

 I then go to my hive of drones and pick out as many as I thinlc I may need, and then 

 proceed in the manner you describe in your report of 1885. I beheve the whole se- 

 cret of success Ues in the drones, and I am not able to tell how old the drone must 

 be, or how the right condition is brought about, or whether it was originally intended 

 that only a very small percentage of drones should be capable of fertilizing a queen. 

 I have, however, discovered that there are three kinds of drones. First, the drone 

 which when squeezed bursts with apparently dry organs of generation. Second, 

 drones wluch burst with an abundance of seminal fluid resembling a mixture made 

 by adding bromides to a silver solution. Third, drones which bursting show a fluid 

 resembluig albumen. With the two former kinds I have succeeded in fertilizing a 

 single queen. V/ith the latter I have fertilized over two hundi-ed queens the past 



