348 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



December 



all plants tend ever to vary, probably 

 as they are differently impressed by a 

 different environment. All inherit 

 ancestral characteristics, or, we may 

 say, that the hereditary tendency is 

 manifest in both plants and animals. 

 We should the more expect that in- 

 sects and vertebrate animals would 

 come under the same laws of inheri- 

 tance. We are safe then in concluding 

 that any law of breeding that is dem- 

 onstrated to the vertebrate line of ani- 

 mal life, will hold as true among the 

 insect class. 



ESTABLISHED LAWS OF BREEDING. 



Every intelligent breeder now rec- 

 ognizes that all bis animals are subject 

 to the law of variation. No offspring 

 is precisely like its parent. Marked 

 varieties among plants are known as 

 sports, among animals as variations or 

 varieties. Skilled breeders like Bake- 

 well, Bates, Booth, and the Collins 

 Brothers, are ever keenly on the watch 

 for variations, and as keenly active to 

 preserve desirable variations and to 

 suppress unfavorable ones. The most 

 skillful breeder must be an artist. He 

 has his ideal of excellence and is ever 

 watchful for all appearances of ten- 

 dencies or variations towards his ideal. 

 He selects with severest exactitude 

 and thus is ever building towards his 

 idea of perfection. The ablest breed- 

 ers then must have good judgment to 

 decide wisely as to what is nearest 

 perfection ; must have quick vision to 

 recognize every departure towards his 

 ideal type ; must be resolute that un- 

 favorable results shall be excluded, 

 and full of patience to wait till he 

 may reach the goal of his hopes. 



The astute breeder recognizes that 

 a long line of excellent progenitora, 

 bred to a type with no out-cross, is 



very sure to result in progeny of equal 

 or superior excellence. He knows that 

 the parents are practically equal in 

 their influence to control the offspring, 

 if both parents have been well and 

 carefully bred for a long series of 

 years. He knows that if he persists 

 he will reach excellence that will 

 bless all the future and reward him 

 ■ for patient waiting. And so he labors 

 on with the enthusiasm and faith that 

 cheers and lifts every true artist. 



To recapitulate : The master breed- 

 er must have wisdom to build, in im- 

 agination , a type of animal of highest 

 excellence ; a quick vision to note 

 every variation towards his ideal ; a 

 fixity of purpose that will unhesitat- 

 ingly exclude any offspring that reach- 

 es away from his type ; patience to 

 wait for the slow process of variation 

 and selection to modify, and the sure 

 law of heredity to freeze into fixity 

 the qualities he desires. 



From what we have said in the fore- 

 going it follows that the laws estab- 

 lished in breeding higher animals will 

 prove equally potent in forming new 

 breeds or races of bees. The skillful 

 breeder in apiculture will wisely fix 

 upon a high type of excellence. His 

 typical bee will be, first, a business 

 bee ; the bee that will gather most, 

 alike in good and poor seasons ; the bee 

 that will be too occupied with storing 

 and breeding to even think of swarm- 

 ing till it is forced upon it by heedless 

 management of the apiarist ; the bee 

 that will be so intent upon useful 

 work that it will not think to bristle 

 up in anger except under severe prov- 

 ication ; the bee that will seek out 

 Nature's sweets with such assiduity 

 that it will have little cause to become 

 a free-booter among its neighbors ; a 



