Aug. 2, 1906 



665 



American Ttee Journal 



to think that prolificness in some strains of this race is 

 actually decreasing. 



It is natural that we should want to know why this is. 

 There is but one answer, it -seems to me, and that is that 

 queen-breeding in honey-producing apiaries, is usually not 

 done with a knowledge of the common principles of breed- 

 ing as practiced on other animals and on plants. Careful breed- 

 ers of almost every other form of domestic animals know to an 

 ounce what their stock produces, but how many bee-keepers can 

 give this sort of a record? and it is commonly recognized 

 bv breeders that without records they work in the dark. 



Breeding of both plants and animals with a view to the 

 betterment of stock is now attracting wide attention; this 

 work is not confined to experiment stations and wealthy in- 

 dividuals, but the farmers of the country are recognizing 

 the fact that there is more money in choice stock than in 

 scrub animals. Let me quote General Burchard, associate 

 editor of Hoard's Dairyman, a short extract of an address to 

 dairymen of Wisconsin, what he called "The Cow Breed- 

 er's Shorter Catechism": 



"Q. How many kinds of cows are there? A. Three. 



Q. What are they? A. Dairy cows, beef cows, and 

 combination cows. 



Q. What is a dairy cow? A. One that has the 

 ability to turn all the food she may eat and digest, over and 

 above that required for maintenance, toward the udder, there 

 to be transformed into milk. 



Q. What is a beef cow? A. One that turns her sur- 

 plus food into flesh and fat. 



Q. What is a combination cow? A. One that tries to 

 take both forks of the road and never gets anywhere. 



Q. What causes the difference in cows? A. Heredity. 



Q. What is heredity? A. The biological law by which 

 living beings tend to repeat themselves in their descendents." 



Cattlemen realize that they must breed for one thing in 

 cows, and I believe that bee-keepers should settle down to 

 one line of selection. Honey-production, gentleness and color, 

 do not necessarily go together, and the chances of finding 

 all these combined in one colony are small. Which should be 

 chosen? Honey is the object of most bee-keeping, and that 

 then should be the one, and the colony line of selection for 

 the honey-producer. You may arrive at this by selecting 

 prolificness, or tongue-length, but not both without great 

 difficulty, and, therefore, prolificness, which is vitally neces- 

 sary, should be the first consideration. 



In the extensive work of the Maine Experiment Sta- 

 tion on egg-laying in hens it has been found that some of 

 the best formed hens were poorest in laying ability, and 

 vice versa. They, therefore, select for number of eggs and 

 let everything else go. In this series of experiments they 

 begin with a flock with an average of 120 eggs per year, 

 and now have many individual hens which produce from 

 200 to 250. This, too, has been done in a very few years. 



The application of statements concerning stock may be 

 transferred to bees, and, therefore, does it not seem time for 

 the bee-keepers to arise and join the procession? Let the 

 honey producer drop all fads of color, gentleness, and similar 

 , and breed pure stock for honey, and no longer aim 

 at an "all-purpose" bee. 



Allow me to mention here an institution worthy of no- 

 tice. There was started, about two years ago, an organiza- 

 tion know as the American Breeders' Association, and breed- 

 ers of both plants and animals are uniting in the study of 

 the principles of breeding with a view to improvement of 

 their stock. Breeders of all kinds of plants and animals have 

 seen that they have interests in common, and there is abso- 

 lutely no ground for a belief that the same principles of breed- 

 ing do not apply to bees, and I believe no one claims it, 

 yet none of our queen-rearers have seemingly cared enough 

 about the information to be derived to pay the one 1 

 membership fee which entitles the member to a volume of 

 proceedings worth $5.00 to any breeder. According to the 

 directory in the first volume, the total number of members 

 interested in bee-breeding is one. and that one is not in- 

 cluded in the last published list of members of the National 

 Bee-Keepers' Association. I am happy to say that since then 

 one other person interested to some extent in bei 

 joined, and he is also a member of the National. I would 

 urge that the National Bee-Keepers' Association join the 

 Breeders' Association, and then let every member who cares 

 anythingat all about the improvement of his bees do like- 

 wise. The fee is small and the benefit large. This 



scarcity of bee-keepers may be due to the fact that 

 the organization has nut been properly mentioned in bee- 

 journals. I trust that the editors of the journals will 

 look into this Association, and then give it a little free ad- 

 vertising, for it is a worthy object and is in no sense a 

 commercial enterprise. The editors can do great good in a 

 matter of this sort because they have an easy means of ac- 

 cess to the men who should be interested. 



Since much scientific work has yet to be started in 

 queen-breeding, it may not be a miss to enumerate some of 

 the approved principles of breeding and apply them to bees. 

 You will notice that I say queen-breeding, not queen-rearing, 

 for there is a vast difference. 



The two great factors of all life, both plant and animal, 

 which make improvement possible are Variation and Hered- 

 ity. 



It is proverbial that no two individuals of any one species 

 or race of animal or plant are exactly alike, and this of 

 course applies to bees. During the past winter, I examined 

 500 workers and 1,000 drones, making in all between 5,000 

 and 6,000 measurements, and the results showed remarkable 

 variability in this species. Drones vary considerably more 

 than workers in color and size, and, although I did not have 

 large numbers of queens to measure, it is well known how 

 variable they are. These measurements were of structures, 

 but equal variability is present in the ability to do work, 

 either of egg-laying or honey-producing, as witnessed by 

 the inequality in stores and population of different colonies. 

 There is, then, enough variation. 



The other great fact in nature which makes it possible 

 for man or nature to improve a species or race is, at first 

 thought, directly opposed to the foregoing. "Like begets 

 like" is also true. A prolific female produces daughters that 

 are also prolific, though not all to the same degree; but it is 

 an established principle of breeding that excessive prolific- 

 ness in a female tends to produce in her offspring prolific- 

 ness at least above the average for the race. If variability 

 existed without this hereditary tendency, no improvement 

 could be made, for at every generation the individuals 

 would again vary in all directions. On the other hand, hered- 

 ity could do nothing for us in our work of selection were 

 it not for the fact that variations occur, but around a new 

 center, as it were, in each generation during selection. 



The weeding out of undesirable stock is the greatest 

 task of the queen-breeder. He must pursue his work by 

 (1), inducing variation; (2), producing large numbers of 

 individuals; (3), weeding out all undesirable blood by breed- 

 ing from but one, or very few select animals; and (4), 

 fixing the type. In queen-breeding this means that hundreds 

 of queens must be bred and tested every year, and a very few 

 chosen to continue the work during the following season : 

 it does not seem best to use as small numbers as do most 

 queen-breeders. The Funks in their work on corn-breeding 

 tested 5.000 ears, which bore no relation to each other, and 

 chose two as breeding stock. Luther Burbank, the wizard 

 of horticulture, advocates even larger numbers, having chosen 

 I in 10,000 from among some of his plants. In queen-breed- 

 ing we are more restricted by the limitations of any locality, 

 but I think I am right when I say that a breeding queen 

 should be the best in at least 500 tested queens, and the test 

 is to be made by the actual amount of honey produced in a 

 year as compared with the other 499, always assuming, of 

 course, purity of stock. Cattlemen use scales and the Bab- 

 cock test as the only safe method of choosing the dairy 

 cow; let us use scales in our judgment, and disregard color 

 and other fads when rearing honey-producers. 



For "fancy" bee-keeping, as practiced by many amateurs, 

 color or anything else that attracts may be used. 



Since mating cannot be controlled in bees as in mam- 

 mals, it will be necessary to have several colonies producing 

 drones, but every colony chosen for this purpose should have 

 a high honev record of at least one year's standing, and the 

 queen should be quite as good as the breeding queen. The 

 majority of bee-keepers are notoriously lax in this regard. 

 In many cases the drones of - irery colony in the yard are 

 allowed' to fly, and just so long as this is done we will have 

 no advancement, for thi led selection is working 



against odds that the bee-keeper cannot overcome. In de- 

 fense of such loose methods some queen-breeders argue that 

 a very large number of dro ' o isary and that thi 



he procured in no other way. During the past summer in 16 

 colonies in the Arlington yard, of the Bureau of Ento- 



