GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



General Correspondence 



A PLEA FOR EXPERIMENTAL WORK IN BEE 

 IMPROVEMENT 



BY W. WHITE 



The part played by man in the past in 

 modifying the honeybee to his own uses 

 appears to have been insignificant, princi- 

 pally for the obvious reason that, until re- 

 cent times, the greater portion of the life- 

 history of the insect has been a closed book 

 to him. That some modification has been 

 effected is scarcely to be doubted; and, in 

 view of the immense strides that have been 

 made in this region of appUed science dur- 

 ing the past decade, it is not too much to 

 hope that the near future contains the ful- 

 filment of the beekeeper's desire for a " bet- 

 ter bee." 



A thorough and searching investigation 

 of racial characters is a necessary prereq- 

 uisite to any substantial advance in this 

 direction — a fact which, in the discussion 

 of the subject of bee improvement, has 

 hitherto been almost entirely ignored. Sci- 

 entific inciuiry itself has been confined al- 

 most wholly to the study of anatomy and 

 disease, and but little work has been under- 

 taken to ascertain the manner of inherit- 

 ance of the characters of the bee. 



As is well known Mendel experimented 

 with bees many years ago, but, unfortu- 

 nately, the records of these experiments 

 have not been discovered. The work has 

 been recently taken up again by several 

 biologists in Europe, and doubtless the re- 

 sults of their investigations will contain 

 much that will be of great interest and, pos- 

 sibly, of supreme importance to the bee- 

 keeping fraternity. The work of Mr. Sla- 

 den is fairly well known, especially in Brit- 

 ain and in Europe generally. He has con- 

 clusively demonstrated that Mendelian prin- 

 ciples obtain in the ease of the honeybee. 

 The recently published results of his obser- 

 vations may be summed up as follows: In 

 the cross between a golden queen and a 

 black drone, segregation of the factor for 

 the golden color from that for black occurs 

 in the second generation. The workers and 

 cjueens of the first generation of the cross 

 consist entirely of an intermediate form, 

 while the female offspring of this genera- 

 tion of intermediates consists always of 

 goldens, intermediates, and blacks, the in- 

 termediates being usually greatly in excess 

 of both the goldens and blacks. The evi- 

 dence furnished by Mr. Sladen's experiment 

 shows that, as regards color charactei-s, the 

 be? exhibits the same mode of inheritance 

 as other animal organisms. 



It is an unfortunate possibility, however, 

 that the investigation of bee characters may 

 proceed along lines that will prove of but 

 little interest or of imjnediate benefit to the 

 beekeeper. The experimentist in this de- 

 partment of science usually selects for his 

 purpose some easily recognizable physio- 

 logical character; but in the case of the bee 

 such character's can be of but little economic 

 value. The utility characters of the bee are 

 such that they are not likely to commend 

 themselves to the scientist as furnishing ma- 

 terial for research work in heredity, and 

 the question will doubtless arise in the 

 minds of many beekeepers as to whether 

 some effort should not be made to induce 

 government authorities to institute special 

 experiment stations for work along the line 

 I am suggesting. 



"What constitutes the " better bee " has 

 been discussed at great length during the 

 past few years, and some extravagant claims 

 have been put forward as to success achiev- 

 ed in producing wonderful strains of bees. 

 If Mendelism teaches us one thing more 

 than another it is that such claims, based as 

 they are upon work of a merely empirical 

 nature, are extravagant. Breeders must be 

 reasonable in their demands. They must 

 not expect to create. They may only hope 

 to discover, at the most, what already ex- 

 ists, locked up though it may be, in nature's 

 wonderful storehouse of gifts. The breed- 

 er is an explorer; but the possibilities that 

 are open to him are boundless. He must 

 bring to the work all the patience and skill 

 he is possessed of; for the task of unravel- 

 ing and isolating factors which make for 

 " improvement " is often most intricate and 

 difficult. The element of elusoriness that 

 enters into the problem as a result of the 

 peculiar nature of the bee adds greatly to 

 the difficulty of the work. Yet notwith- 

 standing all that may be said in regard to 

 the complications resulting from partheno- 

 genesis and the difficulty in controlling mat- 

 ing-s, there is not the' slightest doubt that 

 improvement of the bee is feasible. 



The necessary preliminary analysis of 

 utility character can not be made under the 

 conditions that ordinarily obtain in the 

 practice of beekeeping. To ascertain and 

 to distinguish between clear-cut utility 

 characters requires an absolute uniformity 

 of conditions that is never found in the 

 commercial apiary ;Jor the bee responds to 

 its en\'ironment with an exceedingly high 

 degree of sensitiveness. Everj'-day expe- 

 rience proves, beyond a doubt, that great 

 differences exist in utility characters. With- 



