1900 



GLEANINGS IN BEESCULTURE. 



257 



do — manipulate the swarming instinct for 

 something more useful. And as for the rest, 

 with the almost unlimited new varieties of 

 fruits, flowers, and plants ; with Prof. Loeb 

 rearing fish from spawn fertilized with chemi- 

 cals of his laboratory, instead of the sperm of 

 the male ; and Prof. Emile Lung producing 

 frogs of either sex at will, it looks as if men 

 came perilously near being able to create. 



Mr. Culley continues: "Possibly the 

 swarming instinct or impulse can be bred out " 

 (I am with him again), " but probably it can 

 not" ^I say, probably it can). "The possi- 

 bility justifies the trying." We agree again, 

 most perfectly. But I notice that Doolittle 

 has put on his specs and is looking over my 

 shoulder, saying, "What is that?" and with 

 a look that expresses the sincerity of his con- 

 victions he repeats, " Bees swarm because in 

 the beginning the Creator told them to multi- 

 ply and replenish the earth." Quite true; 

 but when they, with the kindly assistance of 

 man, have already multiplied, and the earth 

 is, hereabouts at least, quite fully replenished, 

 shall they keep on multiplying, much to 

 their own and man's disadvantage? Having 

 fulfilled the law, are they any longer under 

 the law ? If they have been assisted by man 

 in fully replenishing a given territory, shall 

 not man now, by careful selection, teach or 

 restrain them from further colonization 

 schemes ? 



But I see I am digressing. Mr. Culley con- 

 cludes his paper by telling how to produce a 

 non-swarming strain of bees if it can be done. 

 He says, "If it can be done at all, keeping 

 thetn from swarming by dividing, etc., for 

 years — for generations and generations of 

 bees, till they 'forget,' so to speak, and the 

 swarming idea, because not using nor need- 

 ing it, would seem to be the method to adopt 

 in order to produce no n-swarmers. ' ' ^,;_.^.: 



Well ! If we take this method of doing it I 

 do not think I shall hazard my reputation as 

 a prophet in saying it will never be done. I 

 should say, as he does, " Probably it can not." 

 But this method does not help matters at all. 

 It simply changes natural to artificial increase; 

 and this must be continued for many years, 

 perhaps fifty or one hundred, without know- 

 ing how we are likely to come out in the end; 

 and I am sure no one would have the patience. 

 No, no ! let us go at it in a scientific way, 

 in harmony with natural law that has pro- 

 duced most marvelous changes in both ani- 

 mal and vegetable life — the law of selec- 

 tion. 



How shall we begin ? Let us select a queen 

 two years old for a breeder. If we can find 

 one that has not swarmed in that time, so 

 much the better, provided it has stored honey 

 with the best, or is as productive as any other. 

 If we do not have such a queen, let us select 

 as nearly as possible. If every colony in the 

 yard has swarmed in previous years, let us 

 take the queen of the colony that stored most 

 honey before swarming, or has swarmed lat- 

 est in the season, for we want to develop the 

 storing instinct at the expense of the swarm- 

 ing instinct if possible. If we pursue this 

 method for two or three years we shall most 



likely find some colony that has not swarmed 

 for that length of time, and proves to be one 

 of our best honey-producers. Now let us use 

 this one for rearing all our queens for, say, 

 two years, should she live as long. Very soon, 

 unless bees are an exception to all vegetable 

 and animal life with which we are acquainted, 

 we shall be able to find colonies with a pedi- 

 gree; i. e., we shall find colonies that are two 

 years old that have not swarmed, nor the col- 

 ony from which their queen came. Present- 

 ly, and it may not be many years, we shall 

 have a queen to breed from whose ancestors 

 in the line of queens have not swarmed for 

 five or six generations. Such a queen, if 

 mated with drones of similar parentage, 

 fhould produce queens that, when properly 

 mated, would give rise to colonies but little 

 inclined to swarm. If two or three or more 

 yards could be run on this line, and queens 

 changed from one to another, it would help 

 to overcome any evils likely to arise from too 

 much in-and-in breeding. 



If, as Mr. Culley intimates, the lessened sit- 

 ting instinct among certain breeds of htns 

 comes from an increased egg production rath- 

 er than any direct efforts of breeders to pro- 

 duce a non-sitting fowl, it proves the correla- 

 tion of parts, showing how, by increasing 

 development in one way or part may change 

 it in other ways. When Mr. Vilmorin chang- 

 ed the wild carrot from an annual to a bien- 

 nial he changed the character of the root, 

 increasing its size as well as its time of 

 blooming. Some with whom I have talked 

 seem to think that, to produce a race of non- 

 swarming bees, would be to weaken the r£ce 

 and their productive capacity. It does not 

 seem to me so. Yet the breeding for color 

 has seemed to do just that. But increased 

 capacity for honey-gathering, or an increased 

 instinct for gathering, seems quite in line 

 with a weakened swarming instinct, as in- 

 creased egg-production appears in connection 

 with decreased incubating instincts. 



So far as my experience goes, or I can re- 

 member, many of my most productive colo- 

 nies have been those in which the instinct for 

 honey-gathering seemed to overshadow the 

 colonizing impulse; and they worked right 

 on, very largely forgetful of the command to 

 " multiply and replenish the earth." 



Middlebury, Vt. 



[ " Rearing fish from spawn fertilized with 

 chemicals of his (Prof. Loeb's) laboratory" is 

 a sentence that astounds me. If it came from 

 the pen of any less authority than Mr. Crane 

 I should class it as '" rank heresy ; " and, even 

 though it seems to be credited by our friend, 

 I can not help feeling, nevertheless, that it is 

 almost on a par with the canard of a few years 

 ago when it was claimed that eggs could be 

 manufactured, and even hatch chickens without 

 feathers. It was thought that some ingredient 

 had been omitted by the chemist, but that he 

 (the chemist) would soon perfect his artificial 

 eggs so that they would hatch chickens with 

 feathers. Perhaps I do not understand. How- 

 ever, the rest of Mr. Crane's article is good, 

 orthodox, practical, and scientific. — Ed.] 



