208 THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



^^'hy are we in practical, everyday work in our apiaries occa- 

 sionally running" across mutation or shall I call them freaks? Let 

 me cite an instance: 



Last season I had a queen whose colony stored about seventy 

 pounds of surplus, very much more than any other colony, and 

 other things were equal. In my locality during 1911 that was an 

 extra yield, for it was the poorest season I ever had, I think. Now 

 what I want to ask is, was not this queen a case of mutation? Of 

 course, it cannot be proven to a dead certainty, but don't it look 

 a little that way? 



Well, I am going to prove this season, if I live, whether this 

 queen is subject to the ]\Iendellian principle. I know queens are 

 not as easily bred as garden peas, but barring parthenogenesis, I 

 have in mind this program : 



About twenty queens were raised from this queen. A\'e will 

 designate the mother queen as J and her daughter as J2x. The x 

 equals their problematical mates. Xow then, if any of those T2x 

 queens equal their mother, would it not be fair to conclude that in 

 these queens, at least, there was a fixedness of the mutation prin- 

 ciple? And then, further, the queens from those mothers (J2x). 

 the daughters of which we will call J3x. should they show the same 

 superiority as the old queen (J), would we not conclude that we 

 had reached a higher specialized plane and that bees can be 

 improved? 



This has been my notion of breeding for next year, and, of 

 course, when I read the Bonney article I was all interest. I will 

 confess, as we all know, that the drone mating is the "Kerosene in 

 Aly CMaple Syrup." However, the only remedy is plenty of drones 

 from the queen which comes the nearest to equalling J, and this D 

 queen, I think, should be followed down as Dl. D2, etc.; this is 

 the wa}^ I have the program mapped out. 1 can conceive of no 

 other wav of fixing a characteristic where we have so many Xs to 

 deal with (drones). 



Query: \\'ho will tell us how to control mating? Don't all 

 speak at once. If bees were not highly specialized, we would, dur- 

 ing the fifty years of queen-breeding in this country, have had a 

 much better bee than we now have. But I believe that there is 

 some room for further development. And it will take skill to reach 

 that point because of the chance we run in getting the drone mating. 

 If Alendel's principle applies to bees (and I tliiiik it does) this plan 

 of breeding ought to show the best results as compared with other 

 plans. AMien we have an extraordinary good storing colony, we, 

 of course, want to preserve that quality in future generations. 



To continually select the best queen each year for a breeder, 

 regardless of what her mother or grandmother has done. is. accord- 



