BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
In mating, the queen receives an enormous number of these spermatozoa, the number having been estimated at from two to twenty million. Since mating usually occurs but once, it is evident that these spermatozon must be capable of independent existence for five years or more, for they are not capable of dividing or increasing in number in any way, and the queen is of course unable to produce new ones. Frequent cases have been reported of queens which have muted more than once, and this probably accounts for irregularity in the markings of the offspring of some queens. It is claimed by some that obviously the first mating must have been unsuccessful, but there seems to be no ground for that view, and there is no reason to believe that both matings were not complete. There is no reason whatever, so far as is known, why a queen can not receive a supply of spermatozoa from two drones, and some of the arguments to the contrary, with no basis of observation or knowledge of the anatomy, are not worthy of consideration. Cases have even been reported in which queens which have actually begun to lay have gone out for a second mating; but the evidence is as yet neager, and it will be well to wait for further observation before considering such a possibility. Usually, however, a queen takes but one muting flight, and thereafter never again leaves the hive except with a swarm. The ovaries develop to such an extent that flight is impossible, without a previous stoppage in egg laying.
## Testing Queens.
If the honey producer is rearing queens for his own use, they may be introduced into full colonies as soon as they begin to lay. A fair idea of the value of the queen may be formed from the number and regularity of the eggs laid in the nucleus box, and if later she is found to be misnated, or not up to the standard in egg laying in a full colony, she should be discarded. A queen may be tested as to the purity of mating by allowing her brood to emerge in a small nucleus, but no estimate can be made in this way concerning her prolitieness. In testing for pure mating, however, the entrance should be covered with perforated zinc to prevent the colony from swarming out. If a queen is to be sold as "untested," she may be shipped as soon as she begins to lay after mating. Tested queens are those which have been kept until their progeny show the markings of pure mating.
Tested queens which have been kept in full colonies to observe purity of mating, and which after one season show that they possess ability to produce strong colonies, are sold as "select tested." However, it is to be feared that some queen breeders are not careful enough about this test and that queens are often sold under this guaranty which are simply tested queens one year old, which simply means that their life of usefulness is thereby shorter by one year. For breeding, nothing but the very best of "select tested" queens should be used. Great care should be exercised in choosing such queens by watching purity of mating, prolifeness, honey production of workers, disposition of bees, tendency to keep a very large colony of bees at all seasons; and especially, care should be taken that brood reuring does not cease as soon as the honey flow slackens in undisummer. Some bees, otherwise good, will stop brood rearing with the first sign of a decrease in honey, with the result that the colony enters the full flow with old bees, and that scarcely anything but old bees are in the colony at the beginning of winter. This is probably the essential cause of the excessive death of bees in early spring, known as "'spring dwindling."
## Necessity of pure stock.
The necessity of purely-mated queens for breeding can not be too emphatically urged. The so-called "- hybrids," or mismated queens, produce young queens of so much variability in every character that it is very unwise to use them. There is one phase of queen breeding which would doubtless prove useful, but which has not yet been tried to any extent. The first crosses of various races have proven very useful; as, for example, the cross between Cypians and Carniolans, but no breeder to the writer's knowledge has ever undertaken to fix the type. That this could be done seems very probable, reasoning from what we know of crosses in other animals, and by careful selection of prolific queens whose workers showed all the characteristics of the first cross, these crosses would doubtless prove valuable as breeders. Under no other circumstances, however, should mismated queens be used.
## Selection of drones.
The selection of drones is one of the things in which the vast majority of bee keepers are notoriously careless. Queen breeders will select a breeding queen with great care and allow her progeny to mate with drones from any hive in the apiary, and just as long as this is done there can be no advance in the types. Drones should not be allowed to fly except from colonies where the queens are prolific and the bees good workers, and just as much care should be exercised in the choice of colonies for the production of drones as for breeding