the year, and were exhibited at the Highland and Agricultural 

 Show at Glasgow this summer. British, Dutch, Austrian, 

 Italian, and Golden Italian strains were used. 



Each hive was stocked with worker bees, worker brood, 

 drones, drone brood, and fertile queen taken from normal 

 colonies. After forming this nucleus of a colony a period of 

 a week was allowed for the bees to settle down and get 

 accustomed to their new home and surroundings. A little 

 food was given. Exits were cut from the lecture room to 

 permit of easy passage for the bees from their hive to the 

 open air, and the inmates were allowed to work as a normal 

 colony. The glass sides which consisted of double thicknesses 

 of glass did not appear in any way to affect the work of 

 the bees. Queens were removed at intervals. Some of the 

 hives were then given queen cells on the point of hatching, 

 others were allowed to rear their own queens, while in other 

 cases virgin queens were introduced. 



The following illustration is typical of the majority of 

 our experiments. 



The queen was removed from what we will, call No. 1 

 observation hive, consisting of pure Dutch bees, and a ripe 

 queen cell taken from another pure Dutch stock was 

 introduced — allowing, of course, the usual forty-eight hours to 

 elapse before introduction. The virgin queen duly hatched 

 and was accepted by the colony. Curiously enough this event 

 produced no unusual excitement in the hive ; the inmates 

 displayed little or no interest in an event which to us seems 

 fraught with importance. The virgin queen at birth is 

 wonderfully active and virile. Her food, we noticed, consisted 

 of honey taken by herself from the honey cells. We found in 

 the majority of cases that usually two days from birth the 

 virgin queen, if the weather was suitable, would leave the hive 

 for a short flight, and again the following day, while in some 

 cases we have observed three flights before the actual mating 

 trip. The average period of these trips was from two to three 

 minutes, and they were invariably taken towards the middle 

 of the day. We have, however, occasionally seen these flights 

 &s late as four o'clock in the afternoon, 



