Entered at the Postoffice, Fort Pierce, Fla., as second-class mail matter. 



Vol. XVII. 



NOVEMBER, 1907. 



No. II. 



PROFITABLE MEETING AT WORCESTER, MASS. 



AMONG THE especially good ad- 

 dresses at the recent Worcester 

 meeting was that of Mr. Jeffrey, 

 on "Inbreeding, its Advantages and its 

 Dangers." Mr. J. is one of those in- 

 dependent sort of thinkers' who does 

 not take much stock in things until he 

 proves it for himself. Also he is al- 

 ways looking for the unexpected and 

 the seemingly impossible. The old ruts 

 he has no use for. But he does not 

 fail to learn from others when he can, 

 even though he feels that he must test 

 and prove their conclusions for himself. 

 Well past middle life, short in stature 

 and unpretentious in manner, he 

 startles one by his energy and vigor. 

 With a full, strong voice and a delivery 

 like a series of cannon shots he held 

 his hearers from start to finish. 



The substance of what he had to say 

 was as follows: The breeding together 

 of closely related animals is good or 

 bad in accordance with the proportions 

 of good or bad in the individuals used. 

 If weak, sickly or degenerate stock is 

 used, the result will be degenerate off- 

 spring, but if the parent stock is strong 

 the offspring will be also. In support 

 of this contention he cites the Devon 

 cattle and the American Merino sheep. 

 Then he told how he had followed the 

 plan with his bees for over seventeen 

 years, resulting in the constant improve- 

 ment of his stock. Then having im- 

 bibed the notion that close breeding 

 was unsafe he introduced new blood 

 and upset the result of all his labors. 



Not that the resulting offspring were 

 not strong, but that the individuals 

 varied so that there was no uniformity 

 in the colonies or in the work they did. 

 Next, he proceeded to show how to 

 select and breed bees. A colony, the 

 offspring of some certain queen, show 

 more desirable traits than do other 

 colonies, hence we would perpetuate it 

 if possible. But how? The work, the 

 results, are produced by the workers, 

 who are the result of their mothers' 

 and fathers' blood. A queen reared 

 from their mother, being a full sister, 

 possesses latent within herself the same 

 traits. So far it is easy, but with what 

 blood shall she be mated? Brothers of 

 the drone with which the original queen 

 mated carry only one part of the 

 combination which produced the de- 

 sirable traits. A drone from the 

 mother of the young queens carries 

 only the blood of his mother, the other 

 half of the original combination. What 

 is needed is a drone possessing blood 

 of both the parents of the workers and 

 such a drone can only be obtained from 

 queen sisters of the workers. There- 

 fore, Mr. Jeffrey lets this first lot of 

 young queens mate as they choose and 

 then from them raises as many drones 

 as he possibly can. When his drones 

 are almost ready he raises another lot 

 of queens from the original queen and 

 mates these to the drones above pro- 

 duced. Now he has queens whose 

 drones and workers possess the bloods 

 which in combination gave the first 



