148 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



young queens, surely all of the 400 

 queens are not gfood enough to produce 

 drones to mate with them. It is easy 

 enough to make excuses for such 

 methods by saying that mating takes 

 place in the air, and, therefore, large 

 numbers of drones are necessary, but 

 in reply to this it might be asked how 

 many breeders of good stock of any 

 other kind would allow any such pro- 

 cedure and at the same time expect to 

 accomplish anything in breeding. The 

 difficulty is, it seems to me, that on 

 account of the low price asked for 

 queens, the queen-rearer must produce 

 large numbers to make anything, and 

 any product of a queen cell with four 

 or more legs and a few wings sells 

 as a queen; for this reason, careful 

 selection is out of the question, since 

 the breeder has no time to waste on 

 selecting colonies for drone-produc- 

 tion. 



The majority of queen-rearers and of 

 honey-producers who rear their own 

 queens pick out the queen in the apiary 

 whose colony has made the best record 

 in prolificness, honey production, and 

 other desired points. Now it is well 

 known that in other forms of plant and 

 animal life not all individuals have the 

 ability of handing down their charac- 

 teristics to their offspring to an equal 

 extent. Because a queen has made a 

 remarkable record it does not neces- 

 sarily follow that all of her offspring 

 will be equally productive; in fact, if 

 she is a sport the chances are against 

 her. It, therefore, would seem better, 

 all things considered, to choose several 

 breeding queens each year and test 

 them for prepotency in breeding. It 

 will probably be found thivt the best 

 breeding queens are not the freaks, 

 but those only slightly above the 

 average, but if by breeding, the surplus 

 may be increased five pounds per col- 

 ony, what an advantage that would be 

 if at the same time the bees require less 

 or no manipulation of brood or spring 

 feeding to stimulate brood rearing. 



So, to pick out one queen as a breeder 

 to the exclusion of all others seems to 

 me to be almost as grave a fault as the 

 production of drones in all colonies. 



Inbreeding is a thing which is as 

 much dreaded among bee-keepers as it 

 seems to be among the rest of man- 

 kind, and for the same reason, or lack 

 of reason. There exists a very com- 

 mon prejudice against the breeding of 

 nearly related individuals, but when 

 one tries to find out the cause of the 

 prejudice it is not easy. It is true that 

 in Nature the breeding of closely re- 

 lated individuals does not usually 

 occur, but that should not necessarily 

 influence the breeder who is using arti- 

 ficial, and not natural selection. 

 Breeders of most domesticated plants 

 and animals now practice inbreeding 

 closely and continually; the closer it 

 is practiced the better the results. It 

 tends to uniformity of stock, greater 

 rate of increase in value, and is, there- 

 fore, to be commended. It is, of course, 

 a sharp edged tool, and the queen- 

 rearer has no business using it, but 

 when a man becomes a queen-breeder, 

 it is perfectly safe. 



In the breeding of most domestic ani- 

 mals there is a popular belief that the 

 male parent is prepotent and has 

 greater influence over the offspring 

 than the mother. More recent investi- 

 gations have thrown considerable light 

 on the matter of prepotency and domin- 

 ent and recessive characters. It is by 

 no means true that one parent can be 

 said to have more influence than the 

 other, as a general rule. In particular 

 instances the case may be entirely dif- 

 ferent. The influence of the two sexes 

 in bees is a subject practically un- 

 touched, but until we have evidence to 

 the contrary it is safe to assume that 

 most of the characters which are de- 

 sired in breeding are such that the off- 

 spring is about an equal combination 

 of the similar characters in the two 

 lines of parentage. In view of this, it 

 seems strange that so many persons 



