Wednesday, Sept. 15--Morning Session. 



Convention was called to order by 

 President Miller. 



A. Rice inquired if, in introducing a 

 queen she escapes from the hive or cage, 

 will she return to the same V 



George Thompson thought she would 

 always mark and return to the spot 

 from which she escaped. 



A. Rice introduced about 70 queens 

 the past season. One escaped while he 

 was placing her on a comb. Afterward, 

 on opening the hive, he found the queen 

 had returned, entered the hive, and was 

 industriously depositing eggs. 



C. C. Coffinberry had introduced sev 

 era] hundred queens, and they had fre- 

 quently escaped,but invariably returned 

 to the starting point. He thought it 

 safe to say queens would always return 

 to the point from which they escape, un- 

 less overtaken by disaster. It is very 

 desirable that the surroundings remain 

 unchanged until her return, and espec- 

 ially the person handling her, as he is 

 frequently the most prominent object 

 she notices in her rapid survey. 



H. D. Burrell inquired if fertilization 

 in confinement, on Prof. Hasbrouck's 

 plan, had proved a succcess V 



T. G. Newman, in response to this 

 query, read the following from the Rev. 

 M. Mahin, D. D., as pertinent to the 

 subject : 



Fertilization in Confinement. 



A year or two ago the above topic was 

 somewhat prominent in the publications 

 in the interest of bee-keeping. I pre - 

 sume that the silence of the present 

 time arises from the fact that the wri- 

 ters have nothing favorable to report. 



When the matter was first brought to 

 the notice of the public, I was among 

 the doubters ; but within a year or two 

 I became a convert to the doctrine that 

 queens might be impregnated certainly, 

 safely and economically, on a plan sim- 

 ilar to that reported by Prof. Hasbrouck. 

 I confidently expected— well, somewhat 

 confidently — that I would be able during 

 the present summer to rear queens from 

 some of my very fine Italian colonies, 

 and to have them mated with selected 

 drones from others, and that I would 

 have a lot of bees a little ahead of any 

 in the country. But, alas for human 

 expectations ! my queens and drones 

 would have their own way, or they 

 would have no way at all. 



I made a box 10x10x12 inches. In the 

 center of the tight-fitting cover I made 

 a hole 3 inches in diameter, and covered 

 it by a glass on the under side extending 

 beyond the edge of the hole all around. 

 When my young queens were 3 or 4 days 

 old I caught and caged them, leaving 



465 



them among the bees until the sixth 

 day. Then, a little after noon I put the 

 cage and queen into my feriilizing box v 

 and opened the cage so that the queen 

 could come out at her leisure ; then 

 caught a drone and put him in. It was 

 easy to get the queen and the drone to 

 tly at the same time, and to fly in close 

 proximity to each other; they would 

 even jostle against each other. But for 

 any practical purpose, one might just as 

 well have been in Greenland and the 

 other at Cape Horn. One sole purpose 

 seemed to possess them, and that was to 

 get out of there. Day after day I ex- 

 perimented with one drone at a time, 

 and with half a dozen, but always with 

 the same result. I lost several young 

 queens in the course of my experiments, 

 and did not get one fertilized on the im- 

 proved plan. In one case I made a cage 

 the size of a frame, only shorter, and 

 closed up the spaces between the frames 

 so that the bees could not get up into 

 the cap or upper story. I opened the 

 cage about noon so that the queen could 

 go above, and put in a few fine drones, 

 covering the upper story with a board 

 having a window in it. in a little while 

 the queen came out, and she and the 

 drones flew nicely, but they utterly ig- 

 nored the purpose for which they were 

 put there. The conditions were the 

 most favorable that I can conceive, and 

 yet every effort was a flat failure, and 

 my opinion is that those who think they 

 have had queens fertilized in confine- 

 ment have drawn upon their imagina- 

 tions for facts. My bees will not mate 

 in confinement, and they seem to be 

 just like other bees. 



I very deeply regret the failure ; I 

 intended, if I could have succeeded, to 

 settle beyond dispute, one way or the 

 other, the question whether the drone a 

 queen mates with has any influence upon 

 her drone progeny. 



Huntington, Ind., Aug. 25, 1880. 



T. G. Newman said the advantage of 

 having queens fertilized by selected 

 drones, from choice colonies, was so 

 great that he had especially desired that 

 a successful and easy plan to accomplish 

 this might be discovered, but at no time 

 has his faith in it been '" greater than a 

 grain of mustard seed." Many plans 

 have been tried, but without success, by 

 prominent apiarists all over the country, 

 as well as at the Bee Journal apiary ; 

 and much as he desires to have it suc- 

 cessfully accomplished, he fears it is a 

 sad failure. If it could be done, it would 

 be one of the greatest achievements in 

 modern bee-culture, and the apiarist 

 could breed races of bees that would 

 answer every requirement and gratify 

 any fancy. 



