Dec. 15. 1911 



749 



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At Borodino, New York 



REAKING THE BEST OF QUEENS. 



" How can the best queens be reared?" 



" From many observations since I wrote 

 ' Scientific Queen-rearing ' I am led to be- 

 lieve that queens and workers are all reared 

 from the same kind of eggs, no matter 

 whether the egg from which that larva 

 hatches is deposited in a worker or queen- 

 cell, and that the change from a worker to 

 a queen is made by the way the larva is 

 treated and fed by the nurse bees. A work- 

 er larva, when from one to two days old, 

 has hardly received other treatment than a 

 queen-larva. Not until it is about 1% days 

 old can I notice that the food is more scan- 

 tily supplied to the worker than to the 

 queen larvae. Because of this fact I claim 

 that, after two days, the older the larva se- 

 lected for a queen is at the time the change 

 is made, the nearer the resulting queen will 

 be like a worker. Even when a three-day- 

 old worker larva is placed in a queen-cell 

 full of royal food, its growth seems slower 

 than that of one that has been in a queen- 

 cell from the beginning, and some marks 

 are noticeable when such emerge, distin- 

 guishing them from those which are reared 

 from larvae between 36 and 48 hours old." 



"But I did not suppose that a mongrel 

 stock could be changed to a thoroughbred 

 simply by feeding." 



"And it can not. You remind me of a 

 physician whom I was telling, some years 

 ago, that a larva which would produce only 

 a worker bee under general conditions could 

 be placed in a queen-cell cup and given 

 food from a royal cell, and thereby become 

 transformed into a queen. He said he 

 would not believe it unless he could see it 

 with his own eyes. As he was a very noted 

 physician, I told him if he would come to 

 my house every day I would show him all 

 I knew' about the matter. He jumped at 

 the chance, and before he went away I had 

 a stick of cell-cups all prepared and given 

 to a colony above a queen-excluder, prepar- 

 ed as for raising queens with a laying queen 

 in the brood-nest below. He was the most 

 persistent pupil I ever had. He insisted 

 that the frame from which I took the work- 

 er larva should be marked so he could note 

 the progress as he came from day to day. 

 In fact, his eyes would sparkle as he saw 

 those larvne growing in the queen-cells. At 

 the end of the eleventh day the queens were 

 emerging from their cells, and he took two 

 of them and compared them with those bees 

 which were emerging from the comb from 

 which I had taken the little larva, and ex- 

 claimed, 'I must believe what my eyes see; 

 but I do not understand.' 



"In reality, with the exception of bees 

 and other related insects, as the hornets, 

 wasps, etc., there is not an animal which 

 combines the qualitiesof worker and queen. 

 It is natural to think that there would be a 

 distinctly defined line between the worker 



and the queen, similar to that between the 

 worker and the drone. I conclude that the 

 manner in which the embryo larva is fed 

 has all to do with it, and decides the direc- 

 tion in which the insect is to develop. One 

 and the same egg may produce a worker or 

 a queen according to the treatment the lar- 

 va receives after it hatches. When the re- 

 productive organs begin to develop in the 

 larva, the faculties and organs peculiar to 

 the worker remain dormant, and vice versa. 

 A fully developed queen can not be pro- 

 duced with a strong worker tongue, pollen- 

 baskets, and sting. Then by transferring a 

 five-day worker larva to a royal cell, from 

 which a royal larva has just been removed, 

 we find that the faculties peculiar to the 

 worker are so advanced that the resulting 

 insect bears somewhat the appearance of a 

 queen, bvit is small with miniature pollen- 

 baskets and short tongue." 



"But suppose you take a three-day-old 

 larva. What then?" 



"In such a case as that, probably a three- 

 day worker larva has not yet been fed un- 

 digested pollen, as is the case later on in its 

 larval life, so we might expect at this stage 

 that the worker faculties had not commenc- 

 ed development at all; but it is well tore- 

 member that on the third day the worker 

 larva is not as lavishly fed as a queen larva 

 at this age. Then, as nature works when 

 unmolested, before the cell in which the se- 

 lected worker larva lies can be changed over 

 and built out into a queen-cell, the fourth 

 day will probably have come, and very poor 

 queens will be the result. A close observa- 

 tion will reveal some of the worker charac- 

 teristics, while such a queen will rarely live 

 a year. Xo one should entertain the idea 

 that a three-day-old worker larva is good 

 enough for a queen. After the bees once 

 begin to scrimp a larva as to its food, such 

 a larva should never be used if the best 

 queen is desired. A larva intended for a 

 queen, from the time it hatches from the 

 egg in a queen-cell, literally floats in a sea 

 of royal jelly, which can not be said of any 

 three-day-old larva in a worker-cell. But 

 up to 36 hours old, nearly every larva as lit- 

 erally floats in a sea of food when in a work- 

 er cell as in a queen-cell; for when a colony 

 is in a normal condition, such a 36-hour-old 

 larva touches nothing but the chyle in the 

 worker cell, and nothing more could be 

 done for it were its cell an inch in diameter. 

 Therefore, for the best queens larvae from 21 

 to 36 hours old must be used, and these per- 

 fected into queens with a colony which will 

 give them afterward all the care and nurs- 

 ing that a colony would bestow in the 

 height of the swarming impulse." 



[Mr. Doolittle, as he usually is, is entire- 

 ly orthodox, and in line with our experience 

 in the rearing of thousands and thousands 

 of queens. We prefer not to have a larva 

 older than 36 hours for grafting. — Ed.] 



