February, 1920 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



81 



they had gained but little in weight. The 

 number of drones appeared to have been 

 soDiowhat reduced, but those that remained 

 How freely. 



In 11 of the nuclei, the queens were found 

 to be producing drone brood of which the 

 most advanced were just capped or about to 

 be capped. In one nucleus there were no 

 larvae but only eggs, which afterwards de- 

 veloped into drones. In three, the queen 

 could not be found; one of these had one 

 egg on the side of a worker-cell; another 

 hail a number of eggs in a queen-cell and 

 in several worker-cells; both these nuclei 

 probably contained fertile workers. In the 

 remaining nucleus, the queen was found 

 balled and not laying yet, but able to fly. 



Subsequent examination at Ottawa on 

 Aug. 9 and 14 showed that six of the drone- 

 breeding queens were producing workers as 

 well as drones. Three of these that it was 

 estimated were producing from 33 to 50 

 per cent workers, showed, postmortem, a 

 nearly clear (slightly clouded) spermatheca. 

 Under the microscope the spermathecal fluid 

 contained numerous sperms, but evidently 

 far fewer than the completely clouded sper- 

 matheca of a properly fertilized queen. In 

 the brood produced by the other three 

 queens, only one to four worker pupae could 

 be found. These three queens, as well as 

 the six that produced drones only, had per- 

 fectly transparent spermathecae in which no 

 sperms could be found. Particulars of each 

 queen are given in the table printed on the 

 foregoing page. 



The interpretation of the results appears 

 to be as follows: 



1. No colonies of honeybees exist on Duck 

 Island and Yorkshire Island. 



2. No drones from outside could reach the 

 queens on Duck Island. (Honeybees were 

 seen in plenty on July 25 at Point Traverse, 

 located about seven miles away, and a 

 small apiary was seen about one-fourth of a 

 mile from this point.) 





I 



3. Only three out of the sixteen queens 

 were lost, not a large proportion consider- 

 ing the wind blew fresh nearly every day 

 from July 23, the day the bees were brought, 

 until August -i. 



4. Of the 13 queens surviving, 12 had 

 started laying. Eleven of these had com- 

 menced to lay between July 28 and August 

 1, at the age of 12 to 16 days, and the re- 

 maining one on August 4 when 19 days old. 

 All turned out to be drone-breeders, but six 

 of them produced some workers. 



It is evident that all the six that pro- 

 duced some workers had been mated, altho 

 sperms could not be found in three of them, 

 and one of these produced only one worker. 



It is probable that the six that produced 

 drones only had also been mated, not only 

 because their symptoms graded almost im- 

 perceptibly into those of the queens that had 

 been mated, but also because in the writer's 

 experience a queen that fails to get mated 

 does not usually, if ever, begin to lay until 

 she is considerably more than 19 days old. 



5. The proportion of workers produced ap- 

 peared to vary with the quantity of sperms 

 present. 



6. Evidently some accident had prevented 

 the spermathecae getting filled with sperms. 

 The most probable explanation is that the 

 drones were too young to fertilize the queens 

 properly. Assuming that laying begins two 

 days after mating, which the writer has al- 

 ways found to be true during the active sea- 

 son, none of the drones flying at the time 

 the first queens were mated were less than 

 five days old or over 16 days old, and all the 

 drones flying at the time that the last queen 

 that began to lay was mated were at least 

 13 days old; probably many of them were 

 a few days older. 



On July 28 in five minutes, two or three 

 drones from a lot that had been raised in a 

 drone comb given to a colony on June 16, 

 the same day as the Duck Island drone comb 

 was given, were seen flying from a colony 



o 





Location of the queen-breeding experiment. 



