Word: bee
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...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...
...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...
...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...
They turn to the Enterprise with the same escapist hunger that makes thousands of city-pent slickers buy the Old Farmer's Almanac. They delight in the fillers ("This line fills this column"; "What's good for bee stings?") and the editorials, like the recent one that reminded the governor that "the Androscoggin River stinks again. . . . We have not heard from Governor Hildreth in some time. Does anybody know whatever became...