THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



to assume that the reason we have 

 failed is because \\q have had no 

 control over the mating of queens 

 and drones. It lias not only been 

 haphazard mating, but every form 

 of in breeding has gone on unin- 

 terruptedl}'. The wonder is tliat tiie 

 bee of the present time has not de- 

 generated from the good old stock 

 of a thousand years ago. Now I 

 shall assert that what is true of the 

 human race and of the higher ani- 

 mals is also true as applied to the 

 honey bee. In-and-in breeding is 

 productive of evil in the animal and 

 vegetable kingdoms throughout and 

 there are no exceptions to the gen- 

 eral rules anywhere. A single 

 cross of near relatives is produc- 

 tive of little mischief; it is the re- 

 peated crosses of near relatives 

 that cause evil. In early times 

 we have many recorded instances 

 of the union of near relatives in 

 marriage. Moses was a son of a 

 brother and sister, but b}' hinj came 

 the law doing away with the inter- 

 marrying of near relatives. Thus, 

 the evils of the practice were early 

 perceived and they were abated for 

 the benefit of the race. Barren- 

 ness was one of the notable I'esults. 

 In the vegetable kingdom, the 

 universality of the law against the 

 uniting of near relatives is made 

 manifest in non-productiveness, 

 and it has long been one of the 

 most potent arguments of bee- 

 keepers in the interest of the honey 

 bee that it was one of the chief 

 agents in effecting the cross-fer- 

 tilization of flowers, thus aiding 

 directly in promoting the produc- 

 tiveness of all kinds of fruit trees. 

 I shall make the point that every- 

 where in nature the highest order 

 of fertilitj' is where cross-fertiliza- 

 tion is possible. In other words, 

 hermaphrodite generation is op- 

 posed to great productiveness 

 wherever found. The uniting of 

 brother and sister is a form of lier- 

 nnqjhrodite generation and the dis- 



position, as we have seen, is toward 

 barrenness. 



My experience M'ith queens 

 mated to ncnrly related drones is 

 that the prolificness is impaired, 

 and continued in-breeding results 

 in queens that are wholly worth- 

 less to the practical beekeeper. 

 On the contrary, every radical 

 cross and every queen mated to an 

 unrelated drone has been normally 

 prolific and many of them remark- 

 ably so. In addition to this fact 

 the working quality is perceptibly 

 augmented. It has also appeared 

 that the workers were longer lived, 

 showing greater vitalit3\ I think 

 we shall find that the impairment 

 of vitality from too close breeding 

 will be manifest, not in sickly bees, 

 but in comparatively short-lived 

 bees. The farther we pursue this 

 line of investigation, the more we 

 shall find to convince us that the 

 greatest success in our efforts to 

 improve the honey bee both as to 

 the prolificness of queens and the 

 vigor and working qualities of the 

 workers will be where we make 

 crosses of the best unrelated 

 queens and drones. If, in addition 

 to this, we make individual selec- 

 tion we shall be certain of success 

 and the "coming bee" will soon be 

 in the range of possibility. 



A plan to this end has already 

 been inaugurated by D. A. Jones, 

 G. M. Doolittle, Abbott L. ISwin- 

 son and myself in sending out vir- 

 gin queens to be mated in distant 

 apiaries. Surely, there will be 

 no mistake in getting queens 

 mated to unrelated drones by this 

 method. Very satislactor}' re- 

 sults the past season have already 

 been noteil by Mr. Doolittle from 

 this practice. 



From this time on, I think we 

 shall see a great traffic in virgin 

 queens, because queen breeders are 

 loth to part with their best queens, 

 and if daughters are mated in the 

 home apiary it is not certain that 



