264 



American Hee Journal 



PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT 



1st Nat'l Bank BIdg. Hamilton, Illinois 



Entered as second-class matter at the 



Hamilton, Illinois. Post-office. 

 C. P. Dadant. Editor 

 Dr. C. C. Miller, Associate Editor. 

 Frank C. Pellett, Staff Correspondent. 



IMPORTANT NOTICE. 



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 years. $300; in Canada. 10 cents extra, and in 

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Copyright: 1916. by C. P. Dadant 



THE EDITOR*S VIEWPOINT 



Breeding for Better Stock 



In our effort to breed for better 

 stock we are handicapped by the fact 

 that we cannot control the mating of 

 the queen, and the average beekeeper 

 pays no attention to the matter of 

 drones. Yet this is a real mistake. 

 Although we are utterly helpless as to 

 the absolute control of the mating of 

 any queen, we can do no little to con- 

 trol the probabilities in the case. We 

 can suppress almost entirely the rear- 

 ing of poor drones, and have none but 

 good drones reared in the apiary. 



To be sure, the drones from neigh- 

 boring apiaries are to be reckoned 

 with. A virgin may meet a drone from 

 a colony three miles or more away. 

 Yet while such a thing is possible, some 

 maintain that a virgin rarely goes more 

 than a quarter or half mile from home 

 on her wedding trip. If that be so^ 

 and it would be a difficult thing to 

 prove whether it be true or not— and 

 the drone goes no farther from home 

 than the virgin, then we are safe if 

 there be no other bees within a mile. 

 In most cases an up-to-date beekeeper 

 who makes much of a business of bee- 

 keeping is not located within a mile of 

 any other apiary of considerable size. 

 So his drones are in the majority, 

 making the chances for home mating 

 greater to the extent of that majority. 



Clearly, then, it is a matter of impor- 

 tance, and of great importance, that we 

 encourage none but the best drones. 

 How shall we do that? "Oh, that's 

 easy," you say. " Select half a dozen 

 or so of the best colonies, rear virgins 

 from one of them, and rear drones 

 from the others. That's all there is to 

 it." Is it ? Suppose we consider the 

 matter a little. 



A certain colony in the apiary, in an 

 average season, yields a surplus of 100 

 pounds, and we call the queen of that 

 colony a 100-pound queen. Of course, 

 it is the workers that do the storing, 



and a worker of that colony depends 

 for.her character, not only upon her 

 mother, but also upon the drone with 

 which her mother mated. In other 

 words, that worker is the daughter of 

 her mother and also of her father, her 

 father being the drone with which her 

 mother mated. While it is true that 

 the worker is the daughter of her 

 mother and of the drone with which 

 her mother mated, it is not true that the 

 drone is the son of his mother and of 

 the drone with which his mother mated. 

 As the drone proceeds from an unim- 

 pregnated egg, he is not at all influ- 

 enced by the drone with which his 

 mother mated. He is the son of his 

 mother alone; or if you insist that he 

 must have a father, then he is the son 

 of his grandfather, the drone with 

 which his grandmother mated. He is of 

 the same blood as his mother was 

 without any reference to her mating; 

 that is, his blood is the product of the 

 combined blood of his grandmother 

 and the drone with which she mated. 



As his grandmother gets her rating 

 from that combined blood, whether 

 she be a 50 pound queen, a 100 pound 

 queen, or whatever she may be, the 

 drone will have precisely the same rat- 

 ing as his grandmother on his mother's 

 side. If his grandmother is a 50-pound 

 queen, he is a 50pound drone. His 

 mother may be a 25-pound queen, a 75- 

 pound, or something else. That doesn't 

 make any difference; he is a 50-pound 

 drone, because his grandmother was a 

 50-pound queen. 



Now let us see how it will work out 

 to have half a dozen of the best queens, 

 using one for rearing virgins and the 

 others for drones. Suppose they are 

 all 1.50-pound queens. Any one of 

 them is all right for rearing queenS, 

 but how about drones? One of them 

 may be the product of a 200-pound 

 queen and a 100-pound drone, and her 

 drones will be all right. Another may 



be the product of a 100-pound queen 

 and a 200-pound drone, and drones will 

 not answer. Just remember that in 

 considering the value of a drone, we 

 are not to consider his mother, but his 

 grandmother. 



With this view of the case we have 

 the comfort of knowing that the prob- 

 lem of securing the best drones is 

 made immensely simpler and easier. 

 For if all our queens are reared from 

 our best stock, the matter of drones 

 takes care of itself automatically. No 

 matter if a queen has mated with the 

 poorest scrub stock of a neighbor, her 

 drones are just as good as any, for they 

 come from the same grandmother. 



So rear queens persistently from 

 best stock, and suffer no drone that has 

 not a respectable grandmother. 



C. C. M. 



When we first kept Italian bees, in 

 the sixties, we found hybrids from our 

 Italian drones three miles away, but it 

 was through a fairly level country. In 

 Switzerland they hold that bees a mile 

 and a quarter away are safe from im- 

 pure dones. 



Probably none of us had looked into 

 this matter of the drones' forbears as 

 Dr. Miller has done in the foregoing. 

 Breeding for better stock is especially 

 indispensable with the men who make 

 it a business to sell queens. We call 

 their attention to both this article and 

 the one on queen selection. 



To avoid rearing drones in undesir- 

 able colonies, it is not only necessary 

 to cut out the drone-comb, before the 

 queen breeds in it, but it is indispen- 

 sable to replace it with worker-comb, 

 as the bees would almost invariably 

 build drone-comb again in the same 

 spot. Some drones will be reared any- 

 how. But we can avoid the promiscu- 

 ous production of thousands of drones 

 in all but the colonies of our selection. 

 In those we will encourage it. As to 

 our neighbors' bees, if we cannot pre- 

 vail upon them to do likewise, we can 

 at least be certain that through our 

 efforts their own bees will finally im- 

 prove. We can also rear drones and 

 queens at seasons when their bees have 

 no drones, either early or late. Success 

 always attends the persistent worker. 



c. p. n. 



The Prospect S 



During the past few weeks our staff 

 correspondent has traveled about 5000 

 miles over eleven States, from Niagara 

 Falls, New York to Aberdeen, S. Dak. 

 In all this region there is an unusual 

 crop of white and alsike clover, and 

 prospects for a crop of clover honey 

 were very good indeed. By the time 



