Science: For Better Bees

At last, announced the persistent U.S. Department of Agriculture last week, there is a quick, sure method of hybridizing bees.

Chief trouble with bees as breeding material is their system of mating. Mating never takes place within the hive. Indoors, drones (males) and virgin queens ignore one another completely.

When a queen is ready to mate, she picks a sunny day and takes off from the hive in a fast, rising flight. All the drones in the neighborhood drop whatever they are doing and follow. The union is consummated high in the air, often miles from the hive. The lucky drone (who is killed by the experience) may come from any bee colony within a large area.

No Interest. This mating system favors cross-fertilization between colonies, but is hard on bee breeders, who can never be sure that an interloper male has not outdistanced more desirable suitors. Bee men tried putting a nubile queen in a large tent with a retinue of drones. Both sexes just tried to get out. They even tethered a queen with a thread, in the hope that she would fly round & round, pursued by drones, until she was in the mating mood. This did not work either. Apparently bees will mate only when flying freely.

Agriculture now believes it has the situation under control. Its bee scientists fasten a virgin queen in a small tube and drug her with carbon dioxide. After a while she lays a mass of unfertilized eggs, which can develop only into drones (another odd bee characteristic). The bee men rear these parthenogenetic males to maturity. Then they use one of them to inseminate artificially the same, still-virgin queen. Thereafter her eggs are fertile and develop into females (workers or queens) fathered by her own fatherless son.

No Outside Drones. This process can be repeated indefinitely without the help of any outside drone. The product is a pure, highly inbred strain of bees, which can be crossed with other strains to give desirable hybrids. For $95 the Department will provide bee breeders with the necessary equipment.

The new method, the Department thinks, may revolutionize the bee business. At present the genetic lines of even the purest strains are apt to be crisscrossed with untraceable parent drones. When questionable strains are removed (by the $95 method), many new types can be bred. There will be long-tongued bees to suck nectar out of red clover flowers (only bumblebees can get it now). Cold-resisting bees will pioneer northerly regions. Efficient pollinators will be developed to fill the needs of orchardists. Exotic strains, such as giant bees and wasp-fighting bees from Asia, may contribute new, valuable qualities to the U.S. bee population.