THE AMERICAIS BEE JOURNAL. 



567 



Official Report to V. 8. Bntomoloirtst. 



CoBtrolliniFecniitotioii Of Queens, etc, 



N. W. M'LAIN. 



The improvement which has been 

 made in mechanical devices and 

 methods of management by Ihe scien- 

 titic and practical apiarists of the 

 United Stales during the past twenty- 

 five years, has resulted in establishing 

 the claims of the industry of bee- 

 keeping to a place among the various 

 branches of rural husbandry which 

 are the acknowledged sources of a 

 nation's wealth. Improvements in 

 the art of bee-keeping and in the de- 

 vices by which the art is practiced, 

 are continually being made, and the 

 degree of advancement made in the 

 past is an earnest of the progress 

 awaiting development in the future. 



Improvements in the devices and 

 methods of management aud import- 

 ing races of bees reported to possess 

 desirable qualities and characteristics. 

 have chietly absorbed the attention of 

 American bee keepers. It is not 

 strange that reliance has been placed 

 upon these resorces as the means by 

 which the best results were to be 

 realized, rather than upon a persistent 

 and skillful application of the laws 

 of heredity and descent, and depend- 

 ence upon the influence of intelligent 

 selection and skillful crossing as a 

 means for developing the highest at- 

 tainable standard of excellence in tlie 

 See, the chief factor of permanent ad- 

 vancement. 



The difficulties attending the con- 

 trol of the process of reproduction, of 

 applying the laws of heredity and de- 

 scent, and securing the influence of 

 Eersistent, intelligent selection in 

 reeding bees have appeared to be al- 

 most insurmountable. The very per- 

 sistent efforts which have been made 

 to improve the bees of the United 

 States by yearly importations of the 

 best races in their purity has also been 

 attended with serious drawbacks and 

 hindrances. These bees, bred for 

 countless generations in a foreign 

 habitat and under climatic conditions 

 widely different from ours, are 

 here submitted to conditions of 

 domestication for which they are 

 ill-adapted. Any moditication and 

 adaptation of habits, instinct, and 



ghysiological structure which may 

 ave been secured by breeding a few 

 succeeding generations under the al- 

 tered conditions and requirements in- 

 cident to domestication in the United 

 States, have been lost with each fresh 

 importation of ancestral stock, and 

 the work of securing the variability 

 and adaptability of instinct, habit, 

 physiological structure, and function- 

 al capacity essential to domestication 

 here, must be begun ab initio. 



That some practical method might 

 be discovered by which the process of 

 reproduction could be controlled, has 

 long been the hope of all progressive 

 apiculturists. With the control of 

 fecundation assured, progress in scien- 

 tilic apiculture would be rapid and 

 permanent. 



In obedience to your instructions, I 

 have continued my experiments in 



striving to discover a practical meth- 

 od by which the fecundation of queen- 

 bees may be controlled. This 1 have 

 endeavored to accomplish by two dif- 

 ferent methods, in both of which 1 

 have been in a degree successful. 

 During the past summer, however, a 

 drouth set in in May, almost with the 

 beginning of the breeding season, 

 which was said to be the severest and 

 most protracted known in this locality 

 for twenty-tive years. No rain fell 

 during eleven weeks, and during the 

 four weeks next succeeding the eleven 

 weeks without rain we had but three 

 light showers, scarcely sufficient to 

 lay the dust, practically resulting in 

 an unbroken, all-consuming drouth 

 fifteen weeks in duration. Under 

 such conditions I found it impossible 

 to bring many of my experimental 

 tests to a successful issue. 



Having discovered last year that it 

 was possible to introduce the drone 

 sperm into the spermatheca of the 

 queen-bee during the term of orgasm, 

 by artificial means, and that fecunda- 

 tion was practicable by such means, I 

 attempted to perfect a method by 

 which this could be done with ease 

 and certainty. For the purpose of 

 holding the queen-bee in position for 

 introducing the drone sperm, I made 

 what I call a "queen-clamp," which 

 consists of a block of wood 2 inches 

 square and 4 inches long, in one end 

 of which is an opening in size and 

 shape like the upper two-thirds of a 

 queen-cell, with the small end up. 

 This block is sawed in two in the mid- 

 dle, leaving half the cell-shaped open- 

 ing on either half. Grasping the 

 queen by the wings or thorax I place 

 her in one half of the cell-shaped 

 openings and carefully close the other 

 half over her. I then place a rubber 

 band around the block and stand it on 

 end. This leaves the queen in posi- 

 tion, head downward, the lower half 

 of her abdomen protruding, and con- 

 fined in such a manner that she cannot 

 receive any injury. 



For the purpose of appropriating 

 and depositing the male sperm I used 

 a hypodermic syringe. I removed the 

 sharp injecting needle, and in its 

 place substituted a nozzle having an 

 opening of sufficient size to admit a 

 knitting-needle of medium size. 

 Over this nozzle I slipped a small, 

 smooth tube, drawn to a point so 

 small that the opening in the small 

 end is not more than half as large as 

 that in the nozzle. After selecting 

 the drone I wish to use, I grasp the 

 head and thorax between the thumb 

 and finger, and by continued pressure 

 cause him to perform the expulsion 

 act. I then remove the bean in which 

 the spermatozoa are massed, and 

 squeeze the contents into a very 

 small glass receiver, an eighth of an 

 inch in depth and diameter. I then 

 add a drop of glycerine diluted with 

 warm rain water, and take up the 

 spermatozoa with the syringe, using 

 the wide nozzle. I then slip the cap 

 having a fine, smooth point over the 

 nozzle and inject the spermatozoa into 

 the vulva of the queen. The queen, 

 which has been held in position by 

 the clamp while the preparations were 

 being made, naturally bends the ab- 



domen downward whenever so con- 

 fined. The vulva is easily opened to 

 admit the point of the tine nozzle-cap 

 when the abdomen is lifted up 

 straight. Of twenty-seven queens 

 treated by this method the last week 

 in May and the first week in June, 

 six proved to be sdccessf uUy fertilized. 

 After that time, although I was per- 

 sistent in my efforts to succeed, and 

 made many and repeated trials, I met 

 with success only occasionally. 



Another method in which I suc- 

 ceeded in fertilizing a few queens in 

 May, before the bees began killing 

 the drones, was in the manner de- 

 scribed in my report last year. I took 

 a number of young queens from 

 nursery cages, clipped their wings, 

 and introduced them to queenless 

 nuclei. When they were seven days 

 old, orgasm being well progressed, i 

 placed them each in turn in a queen- 

 clamp, and, holding them back down- 

 wards, I picked drones from a comb 

 taken from a populous hive, and 

 caused them to expel the generative 

 organs, and selecting those in which 

 the contents appeared of the color 

 and consistencv of albumen, I placed 

 drops of the seininal fluid upon and in 

 the vulva of the queen, which were 

 eagerly received. After the intro- 

 duction of the drone sperm these 

 queens were treated by the bees as 

 fertile queens, and in one or two days 

 assumed the appearance of fertile 

 laying queens, and in from three to 

 six days began to lay fecundated 

 eggs. 



The fact that I did occasionally 

 succeed in fecundating queen-bees by 

 these methods, which proved upon 

 trial as prolific as any queens I had 

 which had been naturally fertilized, 

 queens which I had hatched in an in- 

 cubator and in nursery cages, whose 

 wings I had mercilessly clipped as 

 soon as they had crawled from the 

 cell, and which I knew had never been 

 upon the wing, seemed to furnish rea- 

 son to hope that I would be able to 

 discover a method that would be uni- 

 formly successful. The hope of 

 reaching this much-desired result 

 made me persist in the face of dis- 

 couragements incident to experi- 

 mental work in breeding bees during 

 the prevalence of a protracted 

 drought. 1 am by no means dis- 

 couraged by the partial success now 

 realized. On the contrary, lam hope- 

 ful that under more favorable condi- 

 tions better results may be obtained, 

 and until other and untried resources 

 fail I shall not feel warranted in 

 abandoning effort. 



Observation and experiment lead 

 me to believe that drone-bees differ 

 in degrees of procreativeness, and 

 that the development and exercise of 

 the procreative faculty are under the 

 control of the worker bees. 



First, there appeared to be drones 

 of the impotent sort. If such be taken 

 between the thumb and finger, no 

 pressure short of crushing is sufficient 

 to expel the sex organ. When forced 

 to position external to the body, or if 

 removed by a dissection, the organs 

 are found to be nearly or quite empty, 

 the few spermatozoa being massed in 

 a hard lump, and but little mucus 



