286 
DRONES 
laying fertile or unfertile eggs at will; but 
a queen bee lays both fertilized and unfer¬ 
tilized eggs, alternating from one kind to 
the other in rapid succession. Skillful 
microscopists have carefully dissected eggs 
from worker-cells, and found the living 
spermatozoa. These living spermatozoa 
were precisely identical with those found 
in dissecting a mature drone. Again: 
Every egg a queen lays passes a little sac 
in her body containing a minute quantity 
of some fluid; the microscope shows that 
this fluid contains thousands of these sper¬ 
matozoa. 
Again, the egg that is taken from a 
drone-cell contains no trace of spermatozoa. 
Therefore, like the unimpregnated egg of 
the common fowl, it should never hatch. 
Strange to say, it does hatch and produce 
the drone. The first glimpse one gets of 
the little bit of animated nature is the tiny 
speck alive at the bottom of the cell. Does 
he grow out of nothing, without parentage, 
at least on the paternal side? If his mother 
was an Italian, he is also an Italian; if a 
black queen, he is also a black. It is neces¬ 
sary to conclude, perhaps, that he is the 
son of his mother, and nothing more. The 
egg that has never been impregnated in the 
usual way, must, after all, have some living 
germ incorporated in its make-up, and this 
germ must come only from the mother. 
The reader will see how clear it is that 
drones are in no way affected by the fertil¬ 
ization of the queen; or, in other words, 
that all daughters of a purely fertilized 
Italian queen produce drones absolutely 
pure whether they have been fertilized by 
a black drone or not. 
drones from worker bees. 
Drones are also. hatched from eggs laid 
by worker bees. These drones are usually 
smaller in size than those from a queen, 
because they are generally reared in 
worker-cells, and the question as to whether 
they are capable of fertilizing queens, so 
as to be of some value, like other drones, 
is one that has never been decided. Some 
facts have been brought to light that seem 
to offer good evidence on each side of the 
question; but, so far, there is nothing very 
definite. 
COST OF REARING MANY DRONES. 
Until the invention and general adoption 
of foundation, there was no easy way of 
repressing the production of drones in far 
greater numbers than could ever be desir¬ 
able. (See Comb Foundation.) Since 
the introduction of that article, it is found 
to be quite an easy matter to make almost 
every cell in the hive • a worker-cell. On 
the other hand, one can have a hive entirely 
filled with drone comb, and a good queen 
could be induced to raise nearly, if not 
quite, a full quart of drones at a time. By 
this means one can have his drones raised 
from such stock as he chooses, and he can 
save the vast amount of honey that has so 
long been wasted by rearing an unneces¬ 
sary number of drones. 
As many as several pounds of drone 
larvae have been found in a single hive in 
which no foundation has been used; and, 
to save the honey they would consume, it 
is customary to shave their heads off with 
a very sharp knife. This is certainly rather 
expensive business. 
Since the life of every colony depends 
on the mating of its queen, nature is very 
lavish in providing a great number of 
drones in order that the virgin may be suc¬ 
cessful in her bridal flight, even tho there 
are very few bees in the immediate vicinity. 
But where several colonies are kept in one 
apiary, and especially where they are run 
for honey production, the rearing of so 
many drones is an unnecessary expense, 
the cost of which is nicely shown in an 
article written by G. M. Doolittle, in which 
he says: 
Taken in round numbers, a square foot of 
comb will give 8000 workers or about 5000 
drones. It takes 24 days to perfect the 
drones while the workers will emerge in 21 
days from the laying of the egg. And it will 
take about the same amount of food for the 
rearing of each, since both occupy the same 
space; and when all these 8000 workers have 
emerged from this foot of comb we have a 
fair-sized swarm of honey-gatherers added 
to the other forces of the hive, which will 
almost if not quite turn failure into a suc¬ 
cessful surplus. 
This general subject is covered in Combs 
and in a more technical article called Par¬ 
thenogenesis elsewhere in this book, and 
also under head of Queens. 
REARING DRONES OUT OF SEASON. 
When the honey flow is drawing to a 
close, and the bees may be expected to be- 
