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‘REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGIST. — 177 
fee ding has been required to keep up breedis we and to prevent starvation. When- 
ever feeding was suspended for two or thiee days, throughout nearly the entire 
season, Oviposition would cease and the bees; ate their eggs, and it has required per- 
sistent triais and careful management to reir drones and keep them alive. It has 
been difficult to get three or four queen cells matured in colonies such as in ordi- 
nary seasons would rear from twenty-five to forty, and of those permitted to re- 
main outside in the apiary and seek a mate at will two of every three failed of 
fecundation. During the entire season a large majority of the larval queens, be- 
ing insufficiently fed, died in the cell, and when for days and weeks together the 
temperature ranged from 110° to 120° F. in the sun during several hours each day 
the pap-food would ferment and turn a dark amber color and dry up to the con- 
sistency of thick glue at the bottom of the cells with the dead pupz. When the 
temperature ranged from 100° to 110° F. in the sun the average temperature in the 
hive was from 5° to 2° higher until 112° was reached. Then, when the range in 
the sun was from 115° to 125° the temperature did not go above 112° in the hive. 
The fanners were able to prevent the temperature rising above 112° in hives 
standing in the sun with a shade-board above the hive-cover. The worker larvze 
seem to be able to endure a higher temperature than queen larvee. This sea- 
son, as a tule, the drones were much smaller than drones from the same ancestors 
in the summers of 1885 and 1886, and there was a great inequality in the size of 
drones and queens of the same parentage and reared at the same time in the same 
hive, and a very unusual proportion of the queens were deformed and unable to fly. - 
Continued observation and experiment furnish corroborative evidence of the cor- 
rectness of the theory advanced in my last annual report, namely, that drone bees 
differ in degrees of procreativeness, properly classified as the impotent, the con- 
ditionally potent, and the potent ; and that it is the prerogative of the worker bees 
to determine the degree of development and dominate the function of the drones 
as they determine the kind and degree of development of instinct and organism 
and dominate the functions of the queen. The volition of the queen determines 
the sex of every one of her descendants ; but the life of every individual as well as 
the modifications in organism and instinct depends upon and receives its direction 
_ from the worker bees, whose unerring prescience forbids the rearing or maintain- 
ing of individuals for whose services there exists no present or prospective demand. 
It is only when this keen apprehension of the present and prospective conditions of 
environment indicates a necessity for rearing and maturing potent or potentially 
potent individuals that such are reared and matured and furnished for the func- 
tions they are to perform. Under circumstances unfavorable in the extreme a con- 
dition of seeming prosperity may be artificially produced, and drones numerically 
plentiful may be reared and preserved alive. It has taxed my skill and patience 
to the last degree during the past season to do this. I resorted to every strategem 
I could devise to secure a supply of mature drones, but in most cases the workers 
were either unable or unwilling to supply the drone larvz with food suitable in kind 
and quantity, for a large proportion of the drones weredwarfed. Dissection showed 
the sex organs of this sort to be inferior in size, dry,and empty.. Not one drone in 
one hundred of those which were fully developed, when held by the legs or wings 
or when pressed upon the thorax, were abie to perform the expulsion act, and the sex 
organs of such, with rare exception, contained nothing but a little clear, thin mucous. 
I have during the past season at various times examined the contents of the sex 
organs from scores of drones well developed and structurally perfect of the class 
which I believe to be potentially potent, in which I have not been able to discover 
active spermatozoa, nor was the mucous secretion present of that color and con- 
sistency which I believe to be the product of special feeding and indispensable to 
sexual desire, and for liberating and floating the spermatozoa into the spermatheca. 
Without wishing to appear dogmatic, after another season exceptionally favorable 
for such observation and experience as has furnished more complete data and cor- 
roborative evidence, I venture to reassert my belief as set forth substantially in my 
last annual report, that the preparation for and exercise of the reproductive faculty 
in drone bees, as well as in queens, depends upon and is determined by the workers. 
As with the queen so with the drone, desire and capacity wait upon the will and 
resources of the workers. 
As the queen must be bountifully supplied with egg-food before the egg-cells be- 
gin to germinate and mature in the ovaries; so I believe the drone must be well 
supplied with that special food suited and intended to produce the desire and capacity 
for performing the act of copulation, the giving and withholding of which is in- 
stinetively determined by the worker bees as the present and prospective condition 
demands. Throughout the past season of extreme heat and protracted drought there 
was almost total failure of all natural resources, and all the influences of nature to 
AG 87 12 
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