232 GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. Feb. 15 



accepted on account of their indifferent odor, and chiefly, perhaps, because of their entirely 

 ''harmless" conduct. , 



FAILURE OF THE HIVE-ODOR REACTIONS IN QUEENS AND DRONES. 



It is of interest that the hive odor of a strange colony causes no reaction at all in a 

 queen. Queens never react either peacefully or hostilely toward strangers or toward bees 

 belonging to the hive. They demand nourishment from every bee, and may maintain them- 

 selves even in the most hostile colony as long as it is queenless. Even the "angrily" buzzing 

 bees which besiege the queen-cage in a solid mass, and which try to bite and sting the 

 queen through the wire cloth, put the required food into the extended proboscis of the 

 queen. In this manner a queenless colony will often feed ten or twenty confined queens ; 

 but if one should accidentally free herself and be accepted by the colony, then the bees 

 will let the rest starve. 



The queen recognizes as an enemy only her "rival," even if reared in the same colony 

 (daughter or sister), and who, therefore, must have the same family and hive odor. If 

 two queens come upon each other, only one will remain on the battlefield.** 



If the queen is pleasing to every bee in every colony, the same thing may be said of 

 the drones, who are extremely cosmopolitan, and who loaf about from hive to hive, and 

 in consequence, apparently, of their specific odor, they are received peacefully everywhere, 

 provided, of course, that the killing of the drones has not yet begun. At no time do they 

 display the smallest response of any kind toward other bees, except when they accomplish 

 the object of their existence in the mating-flight. 



, ABNORMAL HIVE ODOR. 



It is worthy of note that drone-producing (fertile worker) colonies, that is, colonies 

 in which the workers take to egg-laying because a queen is lacking, and on account of 

 lack of brood, are not only difficult to requeen, but also equally difficult to unite with 

 queen-right colonies. This is doubtless in consequence of the peculiar hive odor called 

 forth by the presence of so many egg-layers whose number increases the longer this 

 abnormal condition lasts. According to the investigations of Dohnhoff, almost all the 

 bees finally lay eggs without conducting themselves differently from the usual non-laying 

 bees.^' A true queen odor does not seem to develop, and I have observed that drone- 

 laying queens are never rendered the "homage" which a normal queen receives. As long 

 as she is unfertilized, she seems to be unnoticed by the inmates of the hive ; but as soon 

 as ^he begins laying eggs she has around her constantly a ring of "courtiers" (see p. 7). 

 Other colonies very frequently may be united without special precautionary measures, but 

 not so with fertile-worker colonies, which can be joined successfully only by the appli- 

 cation of very special precautions." We therefore have here an abnormal hive odor of a 

 peculiar kind." 



In any case it is evident from the foregoing that the hive odor is exceedingly com- 

 plicated — much more so than would appear from Bethe's account; and the idea of a 

 simple chemical substance and a chemical reflex, incapable of modification, is not enough 

 to clear up the proceedings which are involved. 



"The queen is normally the absolute "monarch" in the colony; but in spite of that we not seldom 

 find cases where there are two egg-laying queens. Here we have the successor encroaching upon the 

 old decrepit queen before the latter dies. But under such circumstances there are always two brood- 

 nests — the queens do not come together. The following observation stands alone, and is the more 

 remarkable because it has to do, not only with two queens, but with two of different varieties. "Since 

 I had the opportunity,", writes one Mr. Breuer, in the Rheinischen Bienenzeitung, "to obtain a purely 

 mated Carniolan queen, I took out the old queen on July 17th, and put in the Carniolan. She was 

 accepted without delay and immediately began laying. Another queen was positively not present in 

 the colony. The brood developed quickly, but I kept noticing among the young bees Germans as well 

 as Carniolans. When I revisited the hive I found upon the same frame, hardly five centimeters apart, 

 two magnificent queens, peacefully together — one German, the other Carniolan. The brood-nest was 

 not divided, but just as normal as if the eggs had all been laid by one queen." (See reference in 

 Bienenw. Centralblatt, No. 22, 1899. Hannover.) 



-° Bienenzeitung, Xlll. Jahrg., No. 20. In passing, I might submit the following: It has been 

 shown experimentally that, as in the circumstances cited, the workers (normally sterile) take up egg- 

 laying. I shall here mention only one such investigation, and shall not take up the various anthropo- 

 morphic explanations which are usually given. There is a wide-spread view among bee-keepers that the 

 larvae of workers which are located nearest to the queen-cell are fed occasionally on royal jelly by 

 mistake; on account of this exceptional nourishment, it is believed that a better development of the 

 ovaries may take place. This view is held also by v. Siebold and Huber. (The ovaries of workers 

 norrnally consist of about twenty to thirty egg-tubes, whereas those of the queen contain about four 

 hundred.) Parallel with and partly qualified, by this view is the incorrect idfa that there is only one 

 or a few egg-laying bees in a drone-producing colony; but if one realizes that almost all workers in 

 such a colony lay eggs, this view is already weakened. In my opinion we here have to do with the 

 same reflexes which induce a colony to produce a young queen during the lifetime of an old weakened 

 queen that is laying eggs in insufficient numbers. What "prudence" and "deliberation" on the part 

 of the bees this suggests to the ordinary observer! Again the same reflexes impel a colony to erect 

 queen-cells if the queen is kept confined for a long time (see p. 14). It is, I believe, for the greater 

 part an unsatisfied instinct for feeding. In the first case we have the pabulum, which is produced in 

 great quantity, and which is not reaching its natural destiny, acting to produce a hypernutrition of the 

 bees, and consequently the stimulation of organs which normally are not stimulated at all. 



«ODathe. 1. c, p. 161. 



*' I shall not consider further the special abnormal hive odors generated by disease (dysentery, foul 

 brood, etc.), nor through the irritability over the lack of the queen. 



