THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 351 



A FROBIiEM FOR THZ: BREEDER. 



However interesting such studies may be to the lover of nature 

 or the student of the occult, they have a far more important and 

 practical relation. The industry of bee-keeping is one of constantly 

 increasing economic importance. By virtue of its indispensable con- 

 nection witli highly intensified agriculture it must presently rank 

 as one of the most important minor foundation specialties of rural 

 activity. The natural development of such industry must necessar- 

 ily attract the interest and end in the inevitable fascination of the 

 agricultural scientist and master of the art of breeding. The same 

 skill which multiplying the quality and productiveness of everything 

 connected with the soil through the wizardry of scientfic breeding- 

 must inevitably be devoted to bee-culture before we can hope to 

 reach the ultimate possibilities of our craft. 



This problem will then no longer be a question of races, species 

 or strains, but one of individual colonies and individual parentage, 

 selected with painstaking reference to individual excellence. Mark- 

 edly characteristic traits, valuable in themselves, or indicative of 

 valuable possibilities in development, will be eagerly sought for and 

 carefully inbred until they become reflex and the vehicle of prepo- 

 tency. The l)iologist has learned already that maternal prepotency 

 is the fountain-head of evolution of species, and that the greater 

 percentage of heritable traits are transmissible directly through the 

 maternal agency. This involves a better understanding of the queen 

 and her relation to the hive and its future population. It involves 

 a conscientious care in selection, isolation and breeding which for its 

 own safeguarding must be divorced from any commercial enterprise. 

 Such an important experiment is too potential in results to be en- 

 trusted to private hands ; it should be undertaken by the state. 



If there be any psychological relation between the physical ac- 

 tivities of the bees and its nervous structure which leads to proof 

 of intelligence exercised under stress of necessity it leads inevitably 

 to the conclusion that some bees know more than others, and that 

 in the ratio of their dififering knowledge they differ in value or pos- 

 sibilities. We breed domestic animals with reference to their intel- 

 ligence, as every breeder knows. Our scientists breed grains and 

 grasses wdiich are resistant to their natural enemies of climate and 

 disease, and do it successfull}". This paper is for the purpose of 

 suggesting that science is not devoting to bee-breeding the attention 

 it should and that it will probably not until the bee-keepers them- 

 selves insist on it. 



In Winona, South Carolina, is a boy named Jerry JMoore who 

 holds the world's record for 228 bushels and three pecks of corn 

 produced on a single acre of worn-out land such as a few years since 

 produced but ten bushels per acre. The dift'erence is one of brains 



