Reprinted from the "Scottish Journal of Agriculture.'' 



EXPERIMENTS CONDUCTED IN THE MATING 

 OF QUEEN BEES- 



The question of the relationship of the queen to the drones. 

 in her own hive has been the subject of experiments extending 

 over a period of three years, with a view to solving the 

 problem of pure mating and of making possible the more 

 rapid improvement in the breeds of bees. 



It has been an accepted fact by practically all writers of 

 literature on bees that the queen bee is never mated with a 

 drone from her own hive, but always with one from another 

 colony. This statement is all the more remarkable as, so far 

 as we know, no previous research work has been conducted 

 to substantiate it. 



It is well known to all bee-keepers that mating takes place 

 in mid-air, and that only one drone is necessary, after which 

 no further mating is required, the queen being capable, under 

 normal conditions, of depositing eggs to populate the hive 

 with her progeny to the end of her life. It is probable that 

 this aspect of copulation has seized the imagination of writers 

 and sustained the assumption that nature has ordained this 

 method to. prevent inbreeding. We are told that only the 

 swiftest and strongest drones can catch the queen during her 

 mating flight, while other authorities have contended, without 

 any proof, that drones at the mating season are in large 

 numbers in mid-air waiting for young queens to appear. 

 Our experience does not agree with this latter statement. 

 Other writers contend that the drone is built chiefly for flying 

 long distances, but our experience is that the drone rarely 

 ventures very far away from his own hive. 



Our experimental work has 'been carried out chiefly with 

 the aid of observation hives holding two to three standard 

 combs, similar to those usually exhibited at honey exhibitions. 

 The glasses were so arranged that the movements of the bees 

 could be observed at all times without difficulty. Six of 

 these observation hives were in regular use throughout 



