1920 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNA! 



129 



incomplete. Mr. Sladen has sug- 

 gested that the presence of hand- 

 picked drones not more than about 

 two weeks old had something to do 

 with his results. This is quite a 

 probable explanation, but there may 

 be others, and there i room for fur- 

 ther observation and experiment. 



What occurred to me in August, 

 1917, was that by greatly restricting 

 the choice of the queen, and perhaps 

 by compelling her to mate with a re- 

 lated drone, I had possibly reduced 

 the vigor of the mating operation, so 

 that the "ensemination" of the queen 

 was very incomplete. 



The fact that a virgin queen, when 

 marking the position of her hive, fin- 

 ishes by ascending into the upper air 

 in a great spiral, has given rise to 

 the erroneous view that mating oc- 

 curs at a great elevation, and that 

 the successful drone is the strongest 

 in flight, the only one in fact that is 

 able to overtake the queen. Maeter- 

 linck states that mating takes place 

 "in the blue empyrean, remote from 

 the haunts of birds, that would other- 

 wise profane the ceremony," but it 

 is clear that he is not writing from 

 personal observation. E. L. Pratt 

 (Swarthmore) actually saw mating 

 occur, within a few inches of the 

 ground, a few feet from the hive that 

 the queen afterwards entered, and 

 he states (Gleanings for 1904) that 

 the flight of the drone was ten times 

 as rapid as that of the queen. 



The very general belief that queens 

 mate at a high elevation to a drone 

 whose power of flight is his only 

 qualification has tended to eliminate 

 from our minds the possibility that 

 sexual selection may play a very im- 

 portant part in the mating of the 

 queen. Do we not find, however, 

 that yellow queens preferably mate 

 with black drones, and vice versa? 

 Cheshire wrote : "Many years ago, 

 when bees were few about me. I 

 placed twenty pure queen-cells in as 

 many stocks. I had abundance of Li- 

 gurian drones, and none of any other 

 race — nineteen of the queens 

 crossed." C. N. Abbott, first editor 

 of the British Bee Journal, in a foot- 

 note to his edition of Dzierzon's "Ra- 

 tional Beekeeping," writes: "There 

 is little doubt but that the queen is 

 exceedingly particular in her choice 

 of a mate, and is apparently very 

 averse to mating with one of her own 

 kin. With twenty Ligurian stocks, 

 each containing plenty of drones, and 

 one stock of other bees, also having 

 drones, the probability is that of 

 twenty young Ligurian queens nine- 

 teen would mate with drones of non- 

 Ligurian stock — at least it has always 

 been so in our experience — tending 

 to the belief that 'natural selection' is 

 more than a myth, even in bees." 



The drone is specialized for pow- 

 erful, long-sustained, and very rapid 

 flight. He is welcome in any hive, and 

 probably travels in his lifetime very 

 far from the hive in which he was 

 produced, for he can take the jour- 

 ney in relays. The result is that a 

 mating queen is encompassed by an 

 enormous superfluity of drones, most 

 of which may have come from a great 

 distance, and her choice is almost ab- 



solutely free. Mr. Sladen and I in- 

 terfered with a primal law of bee na- 

 ture, and compelled the queens to 

 mate under conditions which were 

 entirely abnormal. We can well be- 

 lieve that the operation may have 

 been a very half-hearted and spirit- 

 less affair, possibly on both sides, and 

 its evident imperfection is perhaps 

 not to be wondered at. If this view 

 be correct, it will be of great import- 

 ance in future mating experiments to 

 arrange that there may be available 

 a sufficient variety of unrelated 

 drones, in numbers also which will 

 proportionately far exceed the nu- 

 clei at the mating station. 

 Aberdeen, Scotland. 



Cleaning Frames From Diseased 

 Colonies 



There has been much discussion as 

 to the best way to clean frames from 

 colonies of bees -diseased with Ameri- 

 can foulbrood. H. C. Cook, of Omaha, 

 Neb., has an arrangement which is 

 well illustrated in the two photos 

 shown herewith. A rack holds 20 

 Langstroth frames and fits nicely in- 

 side a galvanized boiler, which is 

 closed with a tight cover. The frames 

 are boiled in lye water for about 20 

 minutes, which is sufficient to remove 

 all traces of honey and wax. One pic- 

 ture shows the boiler closed and the 

 other shows it open, with the rack of 

 frames setting across and the cover 

 on end above the frames. At the 

 right is shown a large pile of frames 

 which have been cleaned by this 

 method. 



Wiring 



I have read Mr. Crane's article on 

 wiring frames, in the January num- 

 ber and, like him, I believe that it is 

 important to stretch the wires well. 

 I tried several methods until I found 

 the perfect one. 



I use 4 vertical wires equally dis- 



tant from one another, leaving but 

 about a half inch between the end 

 ones and the end bars of the frame. 

 I weave the foundation between the 

 wires, by placing it under the first, on 

 top of the next, under the third and 

 on the fourth, so that it is alternately 

 to the right and to the left of the 

 wires, two wires on each side of it. 

 Then, with a hot imbedding spur, I 

 sink the wires in the foundation. 

 Neither cold nor heat can make the 

 foundation fall out, nor sag. 



Try my method and let me know 

 what you think of it. 



H. BELLESSORT. 



France. 



Queen Cells 



GOOD Dr. Miller, by digging up 

 some things I once wrote, 

 makes me appear to be more 

 or less mixed in my preachments and 

 practices. Well, I caught the trick 

 of not knowing it all from him. 



I will confess right here that the 

 behavior of the bees and young 

 queens toward cells of different ages 

 is not always to be forecast, and I 

 surmise that the reason is that we 

 fail to judge the different ages cor- 

 rectly. Of course, if all the cells used 

 in the experiments were artificially 

 produced and hence of knoiwn ages, 

 we would quickly get some definite 

 information. But so far I have not 

 had the time nor felt the necessity 

 of making the necessary tests. 



If I may be permitted to hide be- 

 hind the genial doctor's favorite 

 shield, let me say "in this locality" 

 where we are seldom blessed with a 

 honey-flood, bees are not so likely 

 to throw an "afterswarm" when two 

 cells of apparently the same age are 

 left (after a first swarm, or when old 

 queen was removed to prevent 

 swarming, or for other reasons), but 

 if, perchance, the young queen is lost 

 in mating, the colony is pretty apt to 

 become hopelessly queenless. If I 



Rack holding tweiui irants to fit in Cook's boiler for disinfecting foulbrood. 



