62 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE- 



and the dam with one. The type of the sire is gradually trans- 

 mitted through the whole herd. Generations afterwards the, 

 throwbacks can be pointed out as carrying the typical form and 

 traits of character of a favourite ancestor. Every care is be- 

 stowed upon the sires; it is they that are so advertised. In the 

 show parades it is the sires that are the observed of all observers. 

 When we come to bees the scene changes. We never hear the 

 remark, Where is the drone? but, Which is the queen? If the 

 sire amongst quadrupeds is one among many, transmitting all 

 his good points among the many, how much more so is the case 

 (vith drones ? With the quadruped every descendant is the result 

 of one or more matings between two animals. With bees' how 

 different. It is one, and only one, mating between two individ- 

 uals, as will be seen by referring to the section on the queen bee. 

 But how 'clifferent the result of that single mating. It produces 

 hundreds of thousands of descendants. More remarkable still, 

 the mating of drone and queen results in a progeny of all females. 

 Do not mistake me. I know that queen bees produce a mixture 

 of sexes. But the males are not the result of the mating with 

 her consort, i.e., the one that produced the progeny resulting 

 in all females. The male progeny are the outcome of the mating 

 of a previous generation. How can I tell ? A golden Italian 

 queen (a) mismates — that is, she has come in contact with a black 

 drone (an English bee). What is the result? All the females 

 (workers and queens) are what we should expect them to be, 

 cross-breds, usually termed hybrids ; and if the queen is from a 

 pure stock with Italian blood running in her veins for two or 

 three generations back, the males &he produces are all pure Ital- 

 ians without a taint of black blood visible or invisible. Again, 

 a ,pure-bred English queen (b) with two or three generations of 

 black blood in her veins mates with a full-blood Italian drone (6) 

 resulting in a female progeny of cross-breds as with the queen 

 (a), but the males are full-blood blacks. Now let a perfect and 

 complete female bee («2), being an immediate and direct descen- 

 dant from the queen (a), mate with another black drone. Of 

 course, it will neither be drone (a) or drone (&), because that would 

 be an impossibility ; drone (a) and drone (6) having died imme- 

 diately after mating, as is always the case. This was fully ex- 

 plained in a previous page on the queen bee. The result of the 

 fecundation of the queen bee (o2) is that all tne female progeny 

 have more black blood (three-fourths^ in them than their mother ; 



