52 THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



is an absurd impossibility, judging- from the light we now have. 



A\'e not only do not know which is the dominant nor recessive 

 blood in bees, but on account of parthenogenesis we may never 

 know. One may in a short time make a thousand colonies of bees 

 anything he may care to, simply by killing off the drones not 

 wanted, or he may keep up a mongrel strain, according to ^Ir. 

 Snyder's diagram, by letting his bees swarm all they will and 

 killing- no drones. The average bee-keeper does not need this 

 information, but Mr. Snyder seems to — and I furnish it gladly. 



I shall add to this article a short reply to Mr. Jeffries, for he, 

 like Mr. Snyder, has formed a radically wrong idea of my diagram. 



In my article in the November Review, page 406, I gave a 

 synopsis of the Mendelian diagram as applied to peas, showing that 

 in the fourth generation the plants would yield ten (10) tall and six 

 (6) dwarf plants, and that these, in turn, will breed true ever after. 

 In the diagram of the bees I showed how parthenogenesis nullifies 

 the Altndelian scheme, and showed in diagram what every bee- 

 keeper who has studied knows, that we may make a yard full of 

 bees any breed we wish by .breeding to a certain, ciueen and then 

 breeding to drones of that breed. Transpose my diagram and mate 

 to a Black or German queen and to drones of that breed for about 

 four generations, and the Italian blood will be eliminated. This is 

 merely demonstrating mathematically the law of parthenogenesis, 

 which at one time Mr. Jeffries hooted at loudly. That the above is 

 true is provable ; moreover, it is accepted by breeders everywhere. 

 It is parthenogenesis pure and simple. Could we, however, breed 

 bees as we do peas we could tell a dift'erent story. 



All the assertions made by Mr. Jeffries may be quite true, but 

 have nothing to do with this study, for that it is more than an 

 argument. However, I incline to the opinion that he is wrong on 

 almost all points, because he assumes too much for propositions 

 which cannot be proved on accoiuit of parfJicnof!^cncsis and our i>h 

 ability to mate the bees but once. 



Mr. Jeffries betrays his lack of scientific information when he 

 writes about the "black blood" of the German bee acting as does 

 the indigo — blueing — used by the washerwoman to whiten the 

 clothes. The blood of the bees is just alike, that is, the same color, 

 so the black blood of the German bee cannot brighten the yellow 

 color of the Italian's yellow blood. Moreover, the washerwoman 

 uses the indigo to kill the yellozv tint in the linen and cotton clothes, 

 the zvhite ones, not to make them yellower, because a study of colors 

 tells us that the yellow of the washed cloth is more of an orange, 

 and as orange is composed of red and yellow, blue is the comple- 

 ment color, therefore if it is added it will tend to '"kill" the orange, 

 which the washerwoman does. Now indigo, and the vellow-orange 



