BREEDING OF ITALIAN BEES. 393 



obtaining, in the ensuing season, one hundred and 

 thirty-nine fertile young queens, of which number 

 about fifty produced pure Italian progeny." 



" It is a remarkable fact, that an Italian queen im- 

 pregnated by a common drone, and a common queen 

 impregnated by an Italian drone, do not produce 

 workers of an uniform intermediate cast, or hybrids ; 

 but some of the workers bred from the eggs of each 

 queen will be purely of the Italian, and others as 

 purely of the common race ; only a few of them, in- 

 deed, being apparently hybrids. Berlepsch also had 

 several bastardized queens, which at first produced 

 Italian workers exclusively, and afterwards common 

 workers as exclusively. Some such queens pro- 

 duce fully three-fourths Italian workers ; others, com- 

 mon workers in the same proportion. Nay ; he states 

 that he had one beautiful orange-yellow bastardized 

 Italian queen, which did hot produce a single Italian 

 worker, but only common workers, perhaps a shade 

 lighter in color. The drones, however, produced by 

 a bastardized Italian queen are uniformly of the Ital- 

 ian race ; and this fact, besides demonstrating the 

 truth of Dzierzon's theory, renders the preservation 

 and perpetuation of the Italian race in its purity, en- 

 tirely feasible in any country where they may be 

 introduced." S. Wagner, page 324, in " Hive and 

 Honey Bee." 



Mr. Wagner very frankly admits that there are a 

 few bees apparently hybrids. This fact, of itself, is 

 sufficient evidence of the inutility of relying on or 

 17* 



