NO. 2 RECOGNITION AMONG INSECTS — McINDOO 23 



(sisters to those now in case No. 4) had accepted the dark colored 

 queen. Immediately upon transferring the queen to case No. 4, a 

 worker grabbed her and stung the under side of her thorax ; she 

 died immediately. To the writer this queen emitted a slightly 

 stronger odor than did the light colored one. 



Much more experimentation along this line would be required 

 to prove conclusively that queens have individual and family odors 

 and that they carry the hive odor on their bodies wherever they go, 

 but since there are many evidences in practical bee keeping which 

 support this view, we shall not dwell on it longer. 



6. DRONE ODOR 



Since the human nose is able to detect the very faint sweetish odor 

 emitted by drones, the following experiments were performed to 

 ascertain if this odor has any practical value to the drones them- 

 selves. Twenty middle-aged workers from a frame of hive No. 60 

 were put into each of the lo glass observation cases. After the 

 workers in these cases had become perfectly quiet, a drone from the 

 same hive was introduced into each case ; all lo drones were received 

 without any signs of hostility. This set of experiments was repeated 

 nine times. In all lo sets of experiments lOO drones were used, and 

 eacji one of them was received without any signs of hostility. 



These experiments were again repeated lo times, but instead of 

 using workers and drones from the same colony, the workers in each 

 set of experiments were taken from a frame of a colony having 

 drones, and the drones for the same set of experiments were taken 

 from a different colony. Of lOO drones tested, 22 were attacked 

 lightly and the workers attempted to attack the other 68. 



The preceding experiments were again repeated 10 times, but the 

 workers were taken from various droneless colonies. Of the 100 

 drones tested, each one was attacked quite forcibly. 



There are three possibilities which may be suggested to explain 

 why no hostility was exhibited toward a single drone of the 100 tested 

 in the first 10 sets of experiments : ( i ) The drones probably carried 

 the hive odor of their own hive, which might have rendered them 

 immune to attacks ; (2) the drone odor emitted by them might have 

 also protected them; and (3) since they and the workers were off- 

 spring from the same queen, the drones might have had a family 

 odor like that of their sisters. The workers might have regarded 

 the family odor as a friendly token. The slight hostility noted in the 

 second 10 sets of experiments might have been due to a combination 



