the observation hive was on her mating trip- In all the 

 established colonies nothing but normal conditions was 

 observed. Our observations both in this and many other cases 

 convinced us that the mating of the virgin queen from one 

 hive has no bearing on another, and we can dismiss the theory 

 of any scent connection entirely. The virgin queen returned 

 in three minutes exactly with the drone appendage attached 

 to her abdomen. Two days following her mating trip she 

 deposited her first eggs. Later on we were able to tell from 

 her progeny that she had been mated with a drone from 

 her own hive. A conclusion confirmed the following year when 

 the hive exhibited the general characteristics of this race 

 of bee. 



Similar experiments were carried out with British, 

 Austrian, Italian, and Golden Italians, and identical results 

 obtained. There were slight variations in the time of mating 

 and the numbers of flights before mating, but these variations 

 were evidently due, usually, to different climatic conditions. 



Pbactical Mating. 



With this knowledge we then decided upon a fui'ther 

 practical trial to test the possibility of mating queens with 

 drones from a special colony, at a cost within the reach of 

 the average bee-keeper. 



For some considerable time the Bee-keeping Department of 

 the West of Scotland College of Agriculture has been con- 

 ducting experiments with the varioug races ofc bees, more 

 particularly with a view to discovering the most valuable 

 strain of bee suitable for the south and west of Scotland, and 

 for this purpose many colonies of the native race have been 

 purchased from all parts of Scotland. It was the endeavour 

 to obtain pure mating for this scheme that led us to conduct 

 the experiments contained in this report. 



For the purpose of this experiment 25 Swiss mating boxes 

 were used. Into each box a pint of Dutch worker bees was 

 placed. The plan adopted to obtain these bees was to " drive " 

 a skep of Dutch bees over a queen excluder, thus preventing 

 queen and drones passing through. The driven bees were 

 then syringed with cold water, This prevented them from. 



