Take wire cloth woven about eight meshes to the inch, and construct a cage a foot in diameter, and oval in shape. Five days after the queen has hatched from the cell, put her with three choice drones in this cage and close it to prevent their getting out, then leave the cage with the bees in the sun for an hour or two; if the queen does not become fertilized in the first two hours return her to the hive and confine her to it, and place her with three drones in the wire cage the next day, for an hour or two, and thus repeat until she becomes fertilized.

He also claims to have been successful with a few queens by confining two combs with bees on one side of a hive. A glass eight by ten inches was set in the top of the hive. Although the details are not very clear, it appears that the remainder of the space in the hive was left vacant to give room for activity of the bees. He also quotes L. C. Waite, of St. Louis, as succeeding by this method.

It is interesting to note that during the discussion of the subject at the time when so many thought they had succeeded, careful observers freely admitted their own failure. At the meeting of the American Beekeepers' Society in New York in 1878, Hasbrouck reported success, but men like Nellis, president of the association, and L. C. Root reported that they had found nothing but failure by similar methods.

At the next meeting of the national organization in Chicago, October, 1879, Hasbrouck again provided material for discussion on the same subject when he reported success by releasing the virgin with drones in an empty sugar barrel with a tight cover fitted with a glass window in the top. In recognition of his success, he was granted a reward of $25 offered by Dr. Parmly, of New York, for successful mating in confinement. Although success was generally credited on the part of his hearers, Prof. A. J. Cook, of the Michigan College of Agriculture, appears to have been unconvinced, for he reported that he had tried every method he could think of without result.

That the subject was a live one is evidenced by the fact that at the 1880 convention at Cincinnati, a Mr. Kramer, of Ohio, came forward with another report of success. His method was to confine the virgin with drones in an empty hive body above the colony, with a wire screen between, and a similar screen over the top of the body in which they were confined. The hive cover was removed in the middle of the day so that the sunshine would encourage the young queen and her escorts to fly within the enclosure. The thanks of the convention were voted for this report.

Concerning all this discussion Charles Dadant wrote for Bulletin D'Apiculture, November, 1880, an entertaining account. He recorded how one M. Vaite, a well-known beekeeper of St. Louis, had announced his success with obtaining controlled matings in a closed chamber, at least twenty of which had taken place before his eyes. The assurance with which the statement was made, the details that he gave and the name of the author, left no doubt of the success of the plan. In the following spring, hundreds of trials were made and queens were offered for sale purporting to having been mated in this manner. Doubts began to be expressed and the editors of the bee magazines began getting letters from those who had failed.

An Iowa beekeeper offered a hundred dollars for ten queens which had successfully mated in confinement, later increasing it to $500. When Vaite was questioned, he admitted having written the article in a moment of joyous humor, for the purpose of amusing himself with the trials which the announcement would provoke, and in the hope that these efforts might result in finding a successful method. He had been the dupe of others who had claimed success, but he had succeeded no better than the others.

In 1884 a man named B. F. Lee reported in Gleanings that he had succeeded in getting queen larvae fertilized while yet in the cells, by inoculating them at the age of four to seven days with drone larvae of about the same age. That such a fantastic notion would receive credence hardly seems possible, yet the publication in the May number was followed in the November number by a similar report from O. M. Price to the effect that he had opened queen cells within twenty-four hours after capping and inserted live drone larva in each one. The drone larvae were about one-half the size of the queen larvae desired to be fertilized. He reported that six of these queens laid within twenty-four hours of time of emergence.

For a number of years numerous experiments were reported in which all kinds of boxes, tents, cages, and other containers were used to confine the young queens in an effort to obtain controlled mating. After the publication of an encouraging report there would be numerous others coming forward for a time, after which the subject would lose interest until some other promising effort was suggested.

In the first volume of the American Bee Journal (p. 65, 1861), in an article which describes in detail the behavior of the queen in mating, is told the story of one Lewis Shrimplin, who attached a fine silk thread to the queen in order to keep her within sight while pursued by the drones. This plan was also followed by others later, but it had no value in enabling the beekeeper to select a particular male for the mating.