288 
DRONES 
poor drone, at such times, after vainly try¬ 
ing to go back into the hive, will sometimes 
take wing and soar away off in the air, 
only to return after a time to be repulsed 
again, until, thru weakness perhaps, and 
want of food, he flutters hopelessly in the 
dust, and so submits to the fate that seems 
to be a part of the inexorable law of nature 
and of his being. 
DRONES WITH HEADS OF DIFFERENT COLORS. 
This is a queer feature in natural history. 
Almost every summer some one writes or 
sends specimens of drones with heads of 
different colors. The matter has been re¬ 
ported and commented on at different times 
in Gleanings in Bee Culture. Not only are 
drones with white heads occasionally 
found, but also with heads of a cherry 
color; again, of a bright green, and at 
other times yellow. Why should this pecu¬ 
liarity show itself in the drones more than 
in the queens and workers? Again, why 
should heads be the subject of these bright 
rainbow colors? See Hermaphrodite 
Bees. 
RESTRAINING UNDESIRABLE DRONES. 
Drones undesirable fot breeding purposes 
may be prevented from going out to meet 
the queens, by keeping them from going out 
of the hive, or by letting them go out into 
a cage thru which workers can pass and 
they cannot. This is done by taking advan¬ 
tage of the fact that a worker bee will 
pass readily thru slots in perforated metal 
(or between bars properly spaced) where 
a drone cannot. 
THE PROPER SIZE FOR THE PERFORATIONS. 
The oblong holes must be of such a size 
as to permit the easy passage of workers, 
but exclude not only drones but even 
Perforated zinc. 
queens (see Extracted Honey and 
Swarming). It is no great task to make 
the perforations drone-excluding; but to 
make them queen-ex eluding at the same 
time, and yet not hinder the easy passage 
of workers, requires a very nice adjustment 
in the width of the perforations. The first 
sheet of perforated zinc was cut in Eng¬ 
land, and imported to this country. This 
had perforations 18-100 of an inch in 
width. While this answered a most excel¬ 
lent purpose, a few claimed that queens 
would occasionally get thru it. To obviate 
this, zinc was made with the perforations 
a little narrower. 
The width of this was 5-32 or 16-100 of 
an inch. While no queen succeeded in get- 
Wood and wire honey-board. 
ting thru this, reports, as well as the 
author’s experience, showed that this size 
was too narrow. It not only proved to’ be 
a great hindrance to the workers when 
their honey-sacs were empty, but, when 
gorged with honey, they were scarcely able, 
if at all, to pass thru. Later, perforated 
zinc was made in this country on a different 
pattern, but with perforations exactly 163- 
1000 of an inch in width, or a trifle smaller 
than the foreign. Years of experience 
have shown that this is right for perfor¬ 
ated metal but too wide for wire bars. 
In 1908 there was put on the market a 
new form of queen-excluder consisting of 
wire bars held at the required distances 
apart by means of soft-metal cross-ties at 
eyery two or three inches. These bars con¬ 
sist of No. 14 hard-drawn galvanized wire 
that has been straightened in a wire- 
straightener so that it is as true as a die. 
Contrary to what one might expect, the 
spaces between these bars are more exact 
than the width of the various perforations 
in sheet metal. In the process of making, 
the bars are laid in metal forms Raving 
