Butler, C. G.

English

Rothamsted Repository

Bee Department (1955)Report for 1954 pp 1Thank you for using eradoc, a platform to publish electronic copies of the Rothamsted Documents. Your requesteddocument has been scanned from original documents. If you find this document is not readible, or you suspect thereare some problems, please let us know and we will correct that.Report for 1954Full Table of ContentBee DepartmentC. G. ButlerBee Department , C. G. Butler (1955) Report For 1954, pp 131 - 136 - DOI:https://doi.org/10.23637/ERADOC-1-76- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.r3lBEE DEPARTMENTC. G. ButpnGENERALA number of lectures have been given by members of the Depart-ment to Scientific Societies, Beekeepers' Associations, etc., andassistance has been given at several week-end courses for beekeepersand others. Members of the Department have also continued toserve on various committees, including the Ministry's Bee DiseaseAdvisory Committee and the Honey tr{arketing Staadards AdvisoryCommittee.L. Bailey and C. G. Butler attended the XV International Bee-keeping Congress in Copenhagen and read papers; they alterwardstook part in an Intemational Conference of Bee Research Workersat the Danish Bee Research Station.L. Bailey and J. B. Free have both been awarded the Ph.D.degree of London University. arrd J. B. Free, who has held a specialgrant from the Agricultural Research Courcil for the past threeyears, has now been appointed a Scientific Oficer in the Department.Eliza-beth Tyrrdale-Biscoe and Naacy Free have resitned in orderto devote their time to domestic duties.BBe BrnelrourF oraging behaoiourThe effect of the scent of a crop in initiating the Ioragiag activi-ties of bees who have already learned to associate this particularscent with food has been demonstrated bv C. R. Ribbands. Hetrained equal numbers of bees from a single colony to seek food inthe aftembon only from each of two dishes of sugar s5mtp containingdifierent scents and placed 50 yards apart. Subsequently bothdishes of food were made available to the bees in the morning, and atthe sarne time a small quantity of one orotherof the scents associatedwith the dishes was placed in their hive. It was Iound that theaddition to the hive almosphere of the scent to rvhich she had beentrained doubled the chance that a bee would yisit her Ieeding-p1aceoutside the usual feeding-time. It appears, therefore, that the forag-ing activities of bees may be initiated by the appearance in the hiveatmosphere of a scent which they have learned to associate with foodeYen in the absence of any dancing.This observation may be expected to have a bearing on theelucidation of the probl6ms involved when attempts are made todirect bees to particular crops for pollination purposes.The influence of the psychological condition of a forager on therecruitment by her of further members of her colony to exploit aparticular crop has also been investigated by C. R. Ribbands. Hetrained equal numbers of individualty marked bees belongrng to asingle col6ny to collect s5.mp from iach o{ three dishes plaaed indiffirent directions from theiihive. Dilute sugar syrup was suppliedin one dish and concentrated syrup in another, rvhilst the third dishBee Department (1955)Report for 1954 pp 2t32was first supplied with dilute, and later with concentrated, s1.rup-It was found that twice as many recruits always appeared at the dishin which the syrup concentration was increased as appeared at thedish in which a supply of concentrated s)mlp was constantlymaintained.It appeaxs, therefore, that an improvement irt the concentrationof the nectar in the flowers of a crop is likely to cause the bees whoare foraging on this crop to dance more and to disseminate morebee scent, and thus to attract more recruits to this crop, than beeson another crop in the flowers of which the Dectar concentrationremains constantly at a high level. This may account for some ofthe hitherto uaexplained results of competition between floweringcrops for the attention of pollirating bees.SwartningJ. Simpson has continued to study the nature of the swarmingimpulse in honeybee colonies. In experiments in which colonieswhose bees were making preparations to swarm were paired withcolonies whose bees appeared to be making no attempts to do so,the queens of the two colonies of each pair were interchanged.Uader these circumstances it was found that in some cases swarmpreparations were made by the bees ia either, or both, oI the coloniesof a pair. It therefore appears that the chaage which precedesswarm preparations is not confined either to the queen or to theworkers of a colony.This conclusion is reinlorced by data collected by C. G. Butler,folowirg upon an observation by J. Simpson that the workers of acolony will sometimes attempt to rear a. new queen for themselves,eveu though their old one is still present, but after she has remaiaedtethered amongst them for some time. Thus, Ior example, it hasbeen found that if a mated queen is tethered on a comb in her hivein such a way that, whilst her movements are greatly restricted ardshe does not tay eggs in cells, the workers of her colony have readyaccess to her body at all times, her bees look after her atrd, for atleast a ueek, make no attempt to rear a new queen for themselves.Indeecl, some colonies, although continuously provided with youagfemale larvae with which to do so, made no altempts to rear neu.queens, even when their own queens remained tetheted for severalconsecutive weeks. However, the bees oI most colonies started todo so after their queens had been tethered continuously for I0 or 12days ald, on being released, their queens in three cases out oI fiftyactually laid eggs in queen-cell cups, thus co-operating actively inthe sua.rming preparations that their colonies lrire making. Inter-chalge of such " *l'arming " queens with " non-s\tr'arming' onesyielded results similar to those obtained by J. Simpson ard men-tioned above. UsualJv, however, withia 2 or 3 days of the releaseof a tethered queen in u-hose colony queen cells had been commenced.all the queen cells were destroyed by the bees and her colony returnedto a non-swarming condition.The or.ganizalion of social LiJeBy making use of radioactive 1rC sugar C. R. Ribbands has beenable to extend his investigations to determine the extent to whichthe bees of a colony share the sugary liquids which are collected byBee Department (1955)Report for 1954 pp 3r33the various members of their communitv. The data obtained inhis most recent experiment indicate that i load of radioactive syrupwhich was collected by a single bee was ultimately shared amongstnearly all the 20,00O members of her colony. This result stronglysupports the hlryothesis that the individual odour which each colonyof honeybees possesses, ald which is common to all the members ofthe colony and difiers from those of other colonies, is derived, to acousiderable extent if not entirely, from the {ood which the membersof the colony have been sharing amongst themselves. Thus thebees of a colony are enabled to recogaize, by means of their bodyodours, members of their owrt colony and to distinguish them fromintruders from other colonies.This last and most importart conclusion has been agreed bythose who have worked on this subject most recently (Kalmus, H.& Ribbands, C. R. (f952). Proc. roy. Soc. 8., 140, 50; Butler, C. G.& Free, J. B. (1952). Behadour,4,262; Ribbands, C. R. (176) &Free, J. B. (174)). Hou'ever, there is still some disagreementbetween these authors $ith regard to the part which the behaviourof an intruder, particularly that of a would-be robber bee, plays indetermidag the kind oJ treatment to rvhich she is subjected by anyguard bees who intercept her.C. G, Butler has continued his work to determine the nature andfunction of the substance (" queen substance ") which the householdbees oI a colony seek by licking the body of thei queen. Some ofhis earlier results have been published (I73). There is good reasonto suppose that inhibition of ovary development in worker bees,as well as inhibition of queen-cell production, is dependent upon thecirculation amongst the members o[ a honeybee colony of an ade-quate quantity of " queen substance ". That this is indeed the casehas recently been demonstrated by adding to the protein-rich dieton which a group o[ queenJess bees were being kept, the honey-stomach contents of other worker bees who had just been licking thebodies of their queens. Ovary development in these experimentalbees was signiicantly less than that in a control group, led on thesame diet except that the honey-stomach contents added wereobtaiaed from bees who had not been near a queen for several days.It has also been found that whereas a mated queen normally producessufficient " queen substaace " to inhibit queen-cell toleration andproduction by the workers ol her colony, a virgin queen does notalways do so. It is hoped to publish further results o{ theseinvestigations shortly.GBxrner RESEARcHNulrilion oJ honeybee laruaeIn the past it has been supposed that the addition of pollen to thediet of a female honeybee larva is essential in order to provide thelarva's protein requirements. Further, it has even been supposedthat, since those larvae which are destined to become queens usuallyreceive very little pollen, the addition or otherwise of pollen to thediet of a female larva may help to determine whether a worker beeor a queen is produced. However, by means of estimates, basedupon haemocy.tometer counts of the number of shells of pollengrains in the Buts of mature larvae, J. Simpson has shown thatBee Department (1955)Report for 1954 pp 4134difierent worker larvae receive a variable amount of pollen in theirdiet in summer, and sometimes none at all in winter. It is, indeed,probable that, evea in summer, less than a tenth of the proteinrequirements of a larva are supplied in the form of pollen.Dioision oJ labour in Butnblebee col,oniesJ. B. Free has continued to work on the biology and behaviourof bumblebees. In studies on the division of labour amongst theworkers of a cololy he has confirmed that the larger individuals goforaging more often than their smaller sisters, and that those oI thesmaller members of the colony who do go Ioraging do so less regularlythan the larger ones. Thus the division ol labour into its two mainsections-household duties and Ioraging-appears to be largelydependent upon the body sizes oI the bees concemed. In fact,about two-thirds of the workers ol any colony are either constantlyconcerned with foraging or rith household duties, but the remainingthird carry out both these duties at difierent times in their lives.However, it was found that, as in the case of honeybees, individualworkers will adapt their behaviour and Iorsake one occupation in{avour of another to meet the current requirements of their colonies.The type of food (nectar and pollen) which foraging bumblebeescollect is also determined to some extent by the needs of theircolonies. Thus both the number of larvae present and the natureof the food reserves in their nests have a marked bearing on the t54leof food collected at any given time.Behal,iour oJ egg-l,aying uorhers in Butnblebee coloniesIf a colony of bumblebees loses its queen, the ovaries oI many ofits workers soon develop, provided that they have adequate nourish-ment, and unfertilized, male-producirg eggs are laid. J. B. Freehas studied the behaviour o{ workers who, having lost their queen,have commenced to lay eggs. He found that in each colony one ofthe workers became " dominant " in her behaviour. Such a domi-nant individual spends most of her time incubating a new clump ofeggs, rvhich she herself has probably laid, and actually drives othermembers of her colony away from them.In some queenless colonies a hierarchical system developed,similar to the " pecking order " in flocks of birds. In these casesa particular laying worker was dominant and attacked all the othermembers of her colony, and in many cases a second worker whoattacked all bees except the dominant individual was also present.Indeed, in a few cases a third individual was present who attackedall the members of her colony except the t*'o individuals who werehigher in the hierarchy than herself. It was found that the be-haviour of any individual bee and, consequently, her position in ahierarr:hy, is correlated with the state of development of her ovaries,The most dominant individuals possessed the most highly developdovanes.B iometr i c al inc esti gati on sEtizabeth Carlisle has continued her studies of the characteristicsof ten supposedly pure races ol Apis mellifera, specimens of whichthe Rev, Brother Adam very kindly collected for the Department{rom r:ountries in \Vestern Europe, North Africa and the EastemBee Department (1955)Report for 1954 pp 5r35Mediterranean. The characters measured were those which havepreviously been Iound to show the greatest racial variation-lengthand width oI fore-wing, length oI tongue and hind-leg, number ofhooks on the leading edge oI the hind-wing, and the cubital index(ratio of lengths of two veins in the fore-wing). The specimens werealso classified by colour, the number of broad or narrow light-coloured abdominal stripes and the presence or absence o{ a light-coloured scutellum being the characteristics studied.From the data obtained it appears that a fairly distinct trend ofracial variations extends from North-west Europe to the easternMediterraaea-n, but few clear-cut difierences are apparent betweenbees in adjacent regions. The samples of German, French ard Swissbees examined were very sirnilar in most respects, and togetherappear to form a group, the members of which differ from the beesof Italy in cubital index, tongue length and hind-1eg length, artd fromthe so-called Camiolan race in cubital index and tongue length. Thebees from Greece and Crete were found to be similar in all thecharacters measured except for the cubital hdex, which in theCretan bee is very near the French index, The bees of the Syrianand Cyprian races were Iound to difier in fore-wing and tonguelengths only; and bees of the Tellian race Irom North Africa and ofthe Sicula race from Sicily only differed from one anotherin fore-winglength.It is hoped that a detailed account of this work will be publishedshortly.Queen inboductionWith the help of a number o{ beekeepers, including members ofthe Bee Research Association, C. G. Butler has continued to studythe problems involved when a queen reared in one colony is intro-duced to the bees of another colony whose queen has been removed.During I953, 230 mated queens of difierent ages. including nearly100 that had been through the post or caged in mailing cages forperiods as long as 5 days, were introduced to colonies, by means ofa very simple cage, directly the old queens had been removed.Only one queen was lost. During 1954 several hurdred queenshave again been introduced successfully and with a minimum oftrouble, but several queens have been lost.The reason or reasons for these losses is still ulcertain, but ex-perimental evidence has been obtained which strongly supports theassumption that some oI them were due to the bad temper of thebees of the recipient colonies.It is hoped to continue these investigations during 1955, when itis proposed to experiment with a slightly modified cage which,while still retaidng those features which have been shorrn to bedesirable in the earlier experimental cage, will also ensure that thequeen cannot be released by the bees of the recipient colony beforethe end of a predetermined period of time- In this way it is hopedthat all dificulties will finally be overcome.BEE DISEASESNosema diseaseL. Bailey has now demonstrated that the transference of all theadult members of a colony on to clean combs during the earlyBee Department (1955)Report for 1954 pp 6136surnm er is an effectiye means of eliminating infection with N osema alis .Furthermore, the brood in the old combs can be allowed to emCrgeand join the colony, the bees of which can also recover stores of foodfrom these old combs, before they are removed Ior sterilization.Such sterilization can be carried out effectively with the fumes ofglacial acetic acid or, if no honey or pollen remain in them, withformaldehyde. A full account of this work has been published.Acarine diseaseL. Baitey and Elizabeth Carlisle have carried out trials with anumber o{ acaricides applied as a smoke to bees infected wilh Acara-pis woodi. " Ovotran " (1-chlorophenyl, /-chlorobenzene sul-phonate) was particularly efiective. The number of larval mitesand eggs in infected bees treatedshowed a highly significant reductiona few days after treatment. lndeed, it was found that all Iife stagesol A. woodi were destroyed.Eurol'eqn FouJ BrcodL. Bailey has attempted several times to in{ect small, healthy,honeybee colonies with bacteria which were considered to be thepossible causal organisms of European Foul Brood. On severaloccasions Professor L, P. Garrod, who has khdly been co-operatingby attempting to cultivate the suspected orgadsm (Bacillus flutonl,has obtained a weak growth oI a very similar organism (a strictlyanaerobic, encapsulated Dill,ococcus\ from diseased larvae whichhas been tested in this way. On ail but one occasion no inlectionwas formd, but in one trial a large, apparently growing, collectionof Grir.m fve organisms closely resembling B. pluton was found inone larva.F. A. Skiryer (Microbiology) has also attempted to culture thecausative organism. He isolated several Gram +ve cocci, aI1 o{which were facultative anaerobes. These were tested in hand-reared honeybee larvae, but none grew. On the other hand, agood gro\dh ol B. pluton was obtained in control larvae inlectedrtth"scale"material.A convenient, but still not entirely satisfactory, method o{ hand-rearing larvae was devised late in the season. Day-old larvae weregralted into empty cells oI wax or glass and fed with food takenfrom larvae in hives. The experimental larvae were kept in screw-topped jars containing about 20 rnl. of 50 per cent KOH. Suchlarvae grew well to Iull size, but never pupated.So far completely satisfactory metFods of testing artificially-cultivated organisms for pathogenicity have not been developed.Nevertheless, much work upon the epidemiology of the disease canbe done without cultivating the responsible organism, and L. Bailel,has commenced working on these problems.Bee Department (1955)Report for 1954 pp 7

Report of the Bee Department 1954

Bee Department (1956)Report for 1955 pp 1Thank you for using eradoc, a platform to publish electronic copies of the Rothamsted Documents. Your requesteddocument has been scanned from original documents. If you find this document is not readible, or you suspect thereare some problems, please let us know and we will correct that.Report for 1955Full Table of ContentBee DepartmentC. G. ButlerBee Department , C. G. Butler (1956) Report For 1955, pp 139 - 145 - DOI:https://doi.org/10.23637/ERADOC-1-77- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.BEE DEPARTMENTC. G. BurrrnGexpnerThroughout the year the research rvork of the department hasbeen continued along the lires mentioned in recent reports. Inaddition, several members of the department have contiaued toserve on a number of Committees and have also given lectures anddemonstrations at meetings of Scienti6c Societies, Beekeepers'Associations and other organizations.C. R. Ribbands has been awarded the Sc.D. degree of CambridgeUniversity, and Doreen Gibbons and Inge Riedel have joined thescientific stafi. T- Palmer-Jones oI Nerv Zea.land has been a guestin the department for about five months, during which he made adetailed study of bee research methods and practical beekeeping inthis country.BEE BEHAVIoURForaging behaliourC. R. Ribbands, in collaboration with Professor J. B. S. Haldane,has been conducting an experiment designed to assess the accuracywith which foragers communicate the whereabouts of food crops toother members of their colonies. As this experiment progressed itbecame clear that the use oI body odour was playing an unexpectedlylarge part in attracting companions to the immediate vicinity of theIoragers. If conditions are propitious it is hoped to conrinue thiswork during 1956.Conclusions that have hitherto been reached on the practicabilityand efficacy of attempts to cause honeybees to visit the flowers ofselected crops which require pollination have been conflicting.J. B. Free has, therefore, been attempting to obtain answers tosome of the problems involved. Tu'o of the questions he has beenstudying are: whether the nectar and pollen already stored in thecombs of a colony influence the choice of plants Irom which itsmembers will collect food, and whether symp feeding of coloniesresults in any iacrease in the proportion of pollen to nectarsubsequently collected by their members.SwatningInvestigation of the ,actors controlling the incidence of swarmingby honeybee colonies has been continued by J. Simpson by ananalysis of records made by beekeepers during their routine inspec-tions of colonies during the swarming season. The followingtentative conclusions have been reached.The proportion of colonies which produce queen cells in thepresence of a laying queen, and therefore are possibly prepariag toswarm, varies from year to year. Smaller, but stitl significant,variations occur between apiary sites. These variations appear tobe related to environmental differences, not to changes in methods of130Bee Department (1956)Report for 1955 pp 2140management or to the genetical characteristics ol the colonies ofbees concerned.The onset oI queen cell production in individual colonies occurs,as a mle, between the middte of May and the end oI July, and ismost frequent around midsummer.The 6ees in over half of the colonies which begin to producequeen cells eventually cease to do so, without swarming, with noother treatment by the beekeeper than reguJar removal of the queencells produced. lt is uncertain whether any colonies in which queencelts ire found witl in fact swarm even without such treatment, sinceobservations of experimental colonies in which queen cells have beenleft have shown that in a number of cases transient queen cellproduction takes place without swarming. Since amongst coloniesu'hich produce queen cells the proportion rvhich fail to swarm, tltoughthev receive no other treatment than regular queen cell removal, isgreiter after midsummer than before, it is probabte that observationsof queen cell incidence fail to give an entirely reliable index of therelalive incidence of swarming at different times.Colonies whose queens are replaced before the end of June, bynew ones reared in the current season, are much less likely to producequeen cells during the rest of the season than colonies which are notri-queened in thii way. However, owing to the uncertain relation-shii between swarming and queen cell production this does notneiessarily mean that re-queening early in the season with a currentseason's queen will reduce the tendency of a colony to swarm.The organizalion of social lifeThe results of C. R. Ribbands's food-sharing experiment, whichrvas carried out in 1954 in order to determine the distributionamongst the members of a colony of one honey-stomachful o[ radio-actil'e uC sugar s),mp collected and carried into the colony by asingle bee, arC still being analysed. Most of the routine work hasnow been completed, and it is hoped that the results will be publishedduring 1956.C. R. Ribbands considers that Iood sharing provides the networkof communication which is the basis of social life in the honeybeecommunity (l&).One of the functions of food sharing is, as he has shown, theproduction of distinctive cornmunitv odours, another, as C. G.ilutler has recently shown (179), is the widespread distribution ofqueen substance a.mongst the worker bees of a colony.- Queen substance plays a rital part in the social organization ofrhe honeybee community, since. provided it is obtained from thequeen in sufficient quantity and shared out amongst the workers ofher colony as normally happens, it prevents development of theworker's ovaries, as well as ifibiting the production of all kinds ofqueen cells. Failure, or inadequacy, of the supply of queen sub-stance in circulation amongst the members of a colony results inoueen cell oroduction and worker ovaw develoDment.' Effective extracts oI queen substailce have now been obtained{rom queen honeybees, even from long-dead ones, irt various organicsolvents (179), and C. G. Butler and Dr. D. B. Carlisle, of TheLaboratory, Plymouth, have demonstrated that extracts oI the sinusglands of femalt prawrs (Leander serrarts) are efiective in iahibitingBee Department (1956)Report for 1955 pp 3141ovary developrnent in worker honeybees, and that honeybee queensubstance can also act as an inhibitor of ovarv deveiooment inprau,ns (t80). C. G. Butler has also been able to demonstrate thathoneybee queen substance and ant queen substance (extracted fromqueens of Formica fusca and F. ruJal are interchangeable. ltappears possible, therefore, that a single ovary-iahibiting substanceis present in diflerent Arthropods, and that in some oi the socialinsects this substance has acquired the additional function ofcontrolling queen production,It is not yet clear whether queen substance reacts directly uponthe metabolism of a recipient bee or whether it merely acts as a" trigger mechanism " and results in the release of a hormone whichinhibits ovary development. If queen substance orJy acts as atrigger -mechanism it is quite likely that still other releasingmechamsms exEt-These investigations are being contiaued, and it is hoped topublish further results shortly.An investigation of the stimuli leading to food exchange betweenthe worker bees of a colony has been made by J. B. Free. As wasanticipated, he has found that bees who are offering food to otherbees, or beggiag for food from them, usually direct their offeringor solicitiag movements towards the heads of other bees; indeed,excised heads alone are suficient to elicit either of these reactions-He has also shown that although the colour and shape of a bee's headplay little or no paxt in eticiting either of these responses, the scentof a bee's head is an important stimulus in doing so. Furthermore,it has been found that the excised heads of bees taken from the samecolony as the experimental bees, whose reactions are being studied,are more efiective in releasing both these responses than are the headsof bees from other colonies, It therefore appears that colony odourmay be important in this respect.Free has also shown that the antennae provide a contact stimulusto both reactions and that their effect can be simulated by means ofartificial antennae.Whereas movement appears to play no part in releasing thebegging response of a bee, it plays a significant rOle in releasing ofier-ing behaviour. Both begging and ofiering are innate reactions, theprecision o{ which shows improvement with age, independently ofconditioning.GsxBner RESEARcHBehaviour of d.rones within the hiveAs a part of the bee breeding research programme J. B. Freehas begun to study the behaviour of drones inside the hive, usingmarked individuals of known ages. He has found that worker beesfeed drones of 2 and 3 days old the most frequently, and also thatdrones of this age are fed for longer on each occasion and thereforepresumably receive more food than drones of other ages. Thenumber of times a drone is fed decreases rapidly as hq becomesolder. The ages of those worker bees who were seen to feed dronesvaried between 2 and 26 days, but workers of 4-S days old wereespecially concerned, Drones of 4 days old and more will take honeyfor themselves lrom storage cells, but younger ones do not appearBee Department (1956)Report for 1955 pp 4142to do so. Drones seem to spend about three-quarters oI the timethat they are in the hive more or less stationary on the combs, butthe periods of inactivity are frequently intemrpted by short periodsof movement over the combs. The age of a drone appears to beimportant in determining the behaviour of the workers towards him.For instance, even when in late summer the older drones of a colonyare being driven from their hive by the workers, the younger dronespresent may not be treated in this way at all, but, on the contrary,may still continue to be fed by the workers.Queen introductionThe studies on the problems involved in queen introductionmentioned in previous reports have been extended, partly with thehelp of members of the Bee Research Association and other bee-keepers. An a-nalysis by C. G. Butter and J. Simpson of the resultsobtained to date (full details of which it is hoped to publish shortly)suggest :(a) That when young, or old, virgin queens were introduceddirectty (without cagiag) to colonies Irom which young(1 5 days) or old (12-28 days) virgin queens had just beenremoved, comparison oI the results showed that it was mucheasier to introduce a queen into a colony from which a similarqueen had been removed than into a colony from which adissimilar queen had been taken-Between old, laying, queens and old, virgin, queens asimilar but less extreme pattern of behaviour was observed,rvhilst with other combinations of queens of difierent cate-gories (which included newly mated queens who had justbegun to lay eggs) the difference in the proportion ofsuccesses between iatroductions of like and unlike queens'vere mostly non-significant. It is suggested that from thepoint of vierv of introduction to colonies, young and oldvirgin queens are sharply differentiated, while the othercategories ol queens studied possess intermediate character-istics in this respect.(6) \lhen mated, laying, queens rvere interchanged directly andthe treatment given to them by bees of the recipient coloniesrvas noted, it was found that the queens were more fre-quently molested by bees belonging to bad-temperedcolonies than by those of good-tempered colonies.(c) An analysis of the results of queen introductions made in thecourse of normal beekeeping practice, using a special cagein which the queen was confined without either food orattendants, showed that mated, tested, queens could beintroduced to colonies from which laying queens had iustbeen removed with a probable average success of at least90 per cent. Virgin queens could similarly be replaced bVmated, tested, queens with a probable success of at leasi80 per cent.The size ol colony to which a queen was introducedappeared to have little, iI any, efiect on the likelihood of heraccepta-nce.Introduction of virgin queens by means of the cageBee Department (1956)Report for 1955 pp 5t43method to colonies from which laying queens had beenremoved was less successful and requires further study.(d) The proportion of successful introductions varied siglifi-cantly in the different summer months, and was actuallvlowesi in June. Difficutty was also found in introducin!mated, tested, gueens to colonies which were or had recentlybeen rearing queen cells. Since June is the month u'henqueen cells are most frequently present in colonies (seesection on swarming), these two observations may berelated to one another.One of the results of food sharing amongst the adult membersof a colony is the production of distinctive colony odours, andexperiments by C. R. Ribbands involving the transference of queensbetween colonies which have been foraging on heather and coloniesr.r-hich have not, show that these distinctive colonv odours playa part in the difficulties oI queen introduction.11:ax-mothIt has been observed by L. Bailey that infestation by the Lesser\\'ax-Moth (Achroia grisellal was eliminated in combs uhich werefumigated with acetic acid vapour for the control of Nosema andAmoeba diseases. Adult and lan al wax-moths rvere killed rvithin24 hours. Some fumigation expriments with the eggs of theGreater Wa-x-Moth (Galleria mellonella) and of the Lesser Wax-Mothshowed that they were killed after exposure to acetic acid fumes for12-24 hours at 59o F. Over 2 days' exposure at this temperaturervere required to kill their eggs with y'-dichlorobenzene.BEE DISEASESNoseua diseaseAttempts to eradicate Nosema from most of the Department'scolonies were begun by L. Bailey in 1954. The bees of eachcolony were transferred on to combs sterilized with acetic acidor formaldehyde as described in the last Annual Report. ln April1955 only 7 per cent of the colonies showed any infection. This6gure includes colonies which had not been treated for variousreasons, and compares weU with the 6gure of m per cent of coloniesinfected in 1952, the year before research work on the control of thisdisease was begun.The remaining infected colonies have now been treated, and allcombs that are not in use eue now sterilized with the fumes from80 Der cent acetic acid as a routine measure before thev are re-used,It is hoped that the disease will be eliminated by'these simpleprecautions.Acarine diseaseL. Bailey and Elizabeth Carlisle have demonstrated by means offield tests ihat the mite Acarupis wood.i can be elimiriated Irominfected colonies by two applications of any of the following acari-cides: di-fii-chloropbenyt)-methyl carbinol (" Dimite ", " P.K."),ethyl di-(r-chlorophenyl)-glycollate (" Chlorobenzilate ", " Folbex ")and p-clrlorophenyl, y'{hlorobenzene sulphonate (PCPCBS, theBee Department (1956)Report for 1955 pp 6rt{active ingredient of " Ovotran "). These acaricides were appliedas smokes. The weather was warm (55-70" F.) at the times ofapplication, and the disturbance caused in two out of eight colonieswhich were treated in the evening following a healy nectar flowcaused the deaths of several thousand bees. The queens were notaflected.It seems likely tiat treatment with these acaricides can best becarried out during warm weather, in early summer, before the mainnectar flow begins, as treatment is distiacfly less efficient whenapplied during cool (40-60' F.) weather.\\rhereas PCPCBS was still tbe only acaricide treatment whichproduced rapid ovicidal efiects in lurther laboratory tests, it provedno more eficient than the other acaricides irr field trials during 1955.The ovicidal efiect, although significant, is probably too slight.It is probable that much more efrcient acaricides o{ these typesfor use against Acarapis woodi are to be {ound. Even phenylsalicylate has recently been found to be highly effective, but it maybe too toxic to bees. Methyl salicylate also has significant effects,but again it appears that its toxicity to the bee reduces its practicalvalue, Nitrobenzene, probably the active constituent of Frorv'smixture, was found to be toxic to bees but not to mites whenapplied as a smoke. Tests with Frow's mixture applied in theusual {ashion during the winter of 1954-55 showed it to be veryeffective against the mites. But controlled experiments demon-strated that all the infected bees also died in treated colonies in thelatter part of the rvinter. This proved to be disastrous to theheavily inlected colonies which were treated, but such an efiect*'ould be acceptable in the cases of colonies which were oniy lightlyinfected.Eurolean Foul, Brood.L. Bailey has contiaued to study the natural cycle of infection.All the bees from iafected colonies were transferred to uDcontami-nated combs in the late summer of 1954, when the disease hadpractically disappeared for the season. During lg55 these experi-mental colonies became very strong, but a few larvae that had diedfrom the disease were firct found in mid-June, and infection rapidlyincreased and reached a peak at the end of the month. As there isno evidence that any stage in the life history of the orgarismresponsible for this disease occurs in the adult honeybee, it is con-sidered likely that in these cases contamination was carried mech-anically by the bees on to the clean combs to which they weretransferred in 1954. In the control colonies dead larvae rvere loundin mid-April and the intection iacreased less abruptly, but it alsoreached its peak at tbe end ol June. The control colonies were bythis time markedly rveaker than the experimental colonies. Despitethe different rate of development of infection and the different efiectit had on the strengths of the control and experimental colonies, thesigns of infection began to disappear from all colonies simultaneouslyand at the same rate, and by mid-August were scarcely detectable.The ability of this disease to develop in very strong colonies (eachof which eventually gave yields of surplus honey of 5O-l0O lb.)suggests that the statements of some workers that the maintenanceof strong colonies obviates this disease are incorrect and that,Bee Department (1956)Report for 1955 pp 7145although the effect of the disease may be masked and easily passunnoticed, it does not suppress its development.Work Las been contiriried on the isola:tion ol " Bacillus " llulottand on the eftects of antibiotics and sterilizing agents upon thecourse of European Fou[ Brood disease.KBee Department (1956)Report for 1955 pp 8

Report of the Bee Department 1955

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Report of the Bee Department 1955

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