THE BEE-I'EEPERS' REVIEW 



147 



their own kind. Not only do bees pro- 

 duce bees but, more than that, if any 

 character exists which is germinal in 

 origin it tends to reappear in the ofl- 

 spring. Characters which arise dur- 

 ing the life time of a parent due to 

 mutilation, injur}- or environment are 

 not inherited, but only such characters 

 as arise from the sex cell. For ex- 

 ample, prolificness is generally con- 

 sidered as capable of inheritance, so 

 that an exceptionally prolific queen 

 bee will tend to produce queens which 

 are also more prolific than the ordin- 

 ary queen, but if that extra prolific- 

 ness be due to stimulative feeding or 

 manipulation on the part of the bee- 

 keeper (an external factor) then there 

 is no reason to expect her offspring to 

 have exceptional prolificness. The in- 

 heritance of acquired characters may 

 have occurred in time past, I do not 

 know whether it has or not, but this 

 much is sure, it occurs very very 

 rarely, if at all, and there is no reason 

 to believe that it does. 



Therefore, the bee keeper who pro- 

 duces prolificness by manipulation is 

 not producing better breeding stock. 

 This is a case worthy of consideration, 

 and the non-inheritance, or at least 

 the rare inheritance, of acquired char- 

 acters is too well established to be 

 controverted by a beekeeper who 

 thinks he has accomplished it on a few 

 bees without an}' scientific proof. On 

 the other hand, characteristics in- 

 herited in the queen or drone may be 

 expected to appear. Although the 

 drone cannot be said to be prolific nor 

 to be a good honey producer, it is 

 nevertheless true that he exercises just 

 as much influence in these respects on 

 the offspring as does the queen, for he 

 brings to the offspring just as many 

 heredity units from his ancestors as 

 does the queen. 



Heredity ma}' be called the stable 

 factor in reproduction, but without an- 

 other factor no change for either good 

 or bad could be expected; to this other 



factor we give the name variation. It 

 is proverbial that no two members of a 

 family are exactly alike; each has cer- 

 tain individual characteristics. Some 

 of these differences are due to environ- 

 mental differences, but others are in- 

 herited differences, if we may so put it, 

 for the hereditary units received from 

 the parents are not identical even when 

 parentage is identical. To go into the 

 proofs of this would require an elab- 

 orate explanation of the microscopic 

 structure and activities of germ cells 

 which is impossible here, but it is 

 well established by observation and 

 experiment. 



Organs vary in both directions from 

 the average according to well-known 

 laws — not mere fortuitous differences — 

 but the majority remain rather closely 

 to the average in size and function un- 

 less modified by external influences. 



These then are the tools of the 

 breeder. By choosing for breeding 

 stock material better than the average 

 which is produced by this variation, 

 he may expect that by constant selec- 

 tion of this kind, the additional value 

 will be fixed by heredity, if the extra 

 good qualities are inherited. If a 

 queen is prolific merely because of 

 spring feeding or other reasons, the 

 breeder need not expect improvement, 

 and for this reason it is wise to use 

 several breeding queens for fear the 

 advantages in one generation are 

 merely acquired and will not appear 

 in succeeding generations. 



The greatest error it seems to me 

 which a breeder of queens can make is 

 to allow drones from every colony in a 

 large apiary to fly. I have visited a 

 number of apiaries devoted almost ex- 

 clusively to queen rearing and have 

 talked to a good many queen rearers, 

 and find that while considerable care 

 is taken in picking out the queen or 

 queens to be used for breeding, there 

 is little selection on the male side. If 

 only a few queens in, say, 400, are 

 good enough to be mothers of the 



