THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



271 



Some writers have said that some- 

 times mismated Italian queens produce 

 drones rather too dark to be considered 

 pure. Considering that the color of 

 drones and queens, and even workers, 

 is not always constant, even in the 

 purest strains, and also that the differ- 

 ent races have been so interming-led, 

 that we cannot be certain of the abso- 

 lute purit3' of any strain of bees, we 

 can see that that fact has very little 

 weight if any at all. 



WORKKR PROGENY. 



That title, like tiie preceding- one, is 

 not exactly correct, but will answer 

 the purpose just as well. What I mean 

 is which has the most influence on the 

 characteristics of the worker bees, the 

 queen or the drone ? 



I think it is the drone. In the higher 

 animals, the concourse of both sexes is 

 needed, whether the offspring is male 

 or female, and generally the offspring 

 gets characteristics from both. With 

 bees the case is different. The intro- 

 duction of the male germ has the effect 

 of completely transforming a male egg 

 into a female egg; and this principle 

 holds, even in the case of hermaphro- 

 dites, that is, bees partly male and 

 partly female. 



We might expect bees possessing 

 heads or legs intermediate between 

 those of the drone or those of the 

 worker, but it is not so. We may find 

 a worker head on a drone body or 

 some of the legs perfect worker legs; 

 with the others perfect drone legs or 

 any other combination. But wherever 

 the female element reaches, the trans- 

 formation is complete. Such being the 

 case, the influence of the spermatozoa 

 being so strong, we maj' expect that 

 not only the sex, but the character- 

 istics of the workers come chiefly, at 

 least, from the drones. 



As to the facts in the case, we all 

 know that the h3'brids from a mismated 

 Italian queen are more like the black 

 bees than like the Italian, in many re- 



spects— their temper, disposition to 

 run from the comb.s, tendency to cap 

 the honey white, etc. 



Doolittle tells us tliat when he first 

 began to keep Italian bees, there were 

 only black bees in the neighborhood. 

 That gave him a chance to observe the 

 first cross. "He says that while the 

 hybrids from an Italian queen mated 

 to a black drone were more like the 

 black bees than the Italians, the re- 

 verse took place when a black queen 

 was mated to an Italian drone. 



QUEEN MATING. 



Do queens mate more than once ? 

 This has been debated recently as an 

 entirely new question. But it is not. 

 Turning to Langstroth revised, page 

 53, we find this : 



"It is now well demonstrated that 

 the queen is fertilized for life by a 

 single mating, though in rare instances 

 they are said to have mated two days 

 in succession, probably because the 

 first mating wss insufficient." 



A French apiarist reported recently 

 that a queen had mated, laid a few 

 eggs irregularly, then mated again a 

 few days later and then layed abun- 

 dantly. 



The next question now is: Could the 

 queen mate again later on during her 

 life? That she may mate two or more 

 times in succession during the first few 

 weeks of her life seems to be well 

 established. But as to mating later, 

 that is something else. We cannot 

 have direct evidence, for if no queen 

 carefully watched did' mate again, we 

 never could say with absolute certainty 

 that it should be the s'^me with all 

 others. But we have prett}' strong cir- 

 cumstantial evidence that they do not. 

 In the first place, no queen that has 

 failed to mate during the first few 

 weeks of her life has aver been known 

 to be anything else than a drone layer 

 during the rest of her life. Queens 

 raised too late in the fall to mate never 

 mate the following spring. 



