N(. G. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 381 



they show t)y me three yellow bands that the queen has mated with 

 an Italian drone. If such a queen mates with a black drone, the 

 worker progeny may have one or two yellow bands, or they may be 

 mixed, some of them with three bauds and some with none. When 

 you have a queen from an Italian mother, the young queen having 

 mated with a black drone, you have what are called hybrid bees, 

 although it would be more correct to call them a cross. So, if you 

 buy a tested queen, you will know that all the workers, drones and 

 queens reared from her are Italians. 



Perhaps you may prefer to buy an imtcetecl queen. She is reared 

 from an Italian mother, and has begun to lay, but none of her 

 progeny have yet hatched out, so it can not be told whether she 

 has mated with an Italian or a black drone. The chances, however, 

 are largely in favor, in most cases, of her being purely mated. In 

 consideration of the fact that the breeder sends her out about 

 three weeks earlier than if he had waited for her to be tested, he 

 will charge you only a dollar or less for her. If it turns out that 

 her worker progeny show the three yellow bands, then you are 

 just as well off as if you had bought a teisted queen, for your un- 

 tested queen has now become a tested queen. It may be well to 

 mention that the first of the yellow bands, the one nearest the head, 

 is very small, and if you do not look closely you may not notice it, 

 especially if the worker is not filled with honey. 



In one respect the eggs of bees are different from the eggs of 

 hens. If a white Brahma hen is crossed with a Langshan rooster, 

 all the progeny, male and female, will be cross-bred. If an Italian 

 queen is mated with a black drone, all the queens and workers 

 raised from that queen will be cross-bred (hybrids they are called,) 

 but the drones will be the same as the mother. In other words, 

 the mating of the queen has nothing to do with kind of drones she 

 produces. The explanation lies in the fact that each egg laid in 

 a worker-cell or a queen-cell ie fertilized by the queen at the time 

 the egg is laid, but eggs laid in drone cells are not fertilized. It 

 may happen ou rare occasions that an egg laid in a worker-cell may 

 not be fertilized, and that egg will produce a drone, and it is also 

 possible that a fertilized egg may be laid in a drone cell, and from 

 it a worker will issue, but with a normal queen such exceptions are 

 very rare. The eggs of a laying worker, or of a queen that has 

 begun laying without ever having mated, or of a queen so old that 

 she has exhausted her store of fertilizing material, will produce 

 drones, and drones oulv. 



So it happens that if you get an Italian queen that has mated with 

 a black drone, giving you workers that are half-blood Italian, you 

 may^ in the next generation, have workers that are three-fourths 



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