552 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



My two No. 6 queens also are both alive, 

 and the brands intact. 1 cannot say that 

 any queen superseded had been so supersed- 

 ed through the branding. Most of the new 

 queens requiring clipping replaced old 

 queens, and in any case must have been 

 superseded months after the spring brand- 

 ing, or I should have noticed the fact by the 

 diminished honey-crop resulting from the 

 swarming that such supersedure, if unno- 

 ticed, would have resulted in. 



Now for the final knock-out. Just you 

 remember that all my newly introduced 

 queens are branded prior to introduction, 

 so that the time spent last spring in sifting 



queens will never occur again if 1 know any 

 thing about it. Only upon the rare occa- 

 sion of being unable to find a superseded 

 queen at the spring overhaul — and not al- 

 ways in such a case — will it be necessary to 

 sift to find the victim. My queens are of 

 very dark leather color, and this spring it 

 was an immense relief to find so many with- 

 out looking for them. I have not lost one 

 Cjueen except one branded on one antenna 

 only, last year, and it is just a gamble 

 whether she died from that, seeing another 

 branded on both antennae is yet alive and 

 hearty. 



Kihi Kihi, N. Z. 



MENDELISM 



BY G. W. BULLAMOEE, F. R. M. S. 



We speak of hybrids as though they were 

 half way between the two parents; but in 

 practice we know that some characteristics 

 are passed on entire by one or the other 

 of the parents. The eye color of children 

 is an example which will occur to many 

 people, and it is with inheritance of this 

 class that Mendelism deals. 



Mendel's expei'iments were carried out 

 with varieties of peas differing in the ar- 

 rangement of the flowers, the form and 

 color of the pod, the form and color of the 

 ripe seed, etc. He reduced his facts to 

 formulae, and published his essay in 1865. 

 It attracted but little attention at the time; 

 yet its rediscovery at the end of the last 

 century has given an impetus to biological 

 research; and Mendel's law has been found 

 to hold for the inheritance of many charac- 

 teristics in plants and animals. 



In his investigation of heredity Mendel 

 concentrated his attention on single pairs of 

 characters. He found that when a tall 

 variety of pea was crossed with a dwarf 

 variety the first generation of crosses were 

 all tall. But the second generation, which 

 was the result of the inbreeding of the tall 

 hybrids, gave plants with a proportion of 

 three tall to one dwarf. The dwarfs, when 

 interbred, gave dwarfs, while the tails were 

 found to be of two kinds. One in three of 

 them could be relied upon to breed true; 

 the other two acted like the tall plants of 

 the first generation, and resulted in off- 

 spring in the proportion of one dwarf and 

 one tall plant exhibiting stability to two 

 tall unstable plants. Mendel describes the 

 tall character as dominant and the dwarf 

 character as recessive. Using the letter A 

 to denote this dominant, and a to represent 

 this recessive, we can express the constitu- 

 tion of all the offspring after the first gen- 



eration as A-\-2Aa-{-a. Another pair of 

 characters, B and h, will give the term B-\- 

 2Bb-\-b, while a third pair, C and c, gives 

 C-\-2Cc-\-c. If the three pairs of terms are 

 present in the original plants, the plants of 

 the first generation will exhibit the domi- 

 nant characters ABC ; but in the next gen- 

 eration we shall get the three terms com- 

 bined to give ABC-f ABc+AbC-f Abc+ 

 aBC+aBc-fabC-fabc + 2ABCc -f 2AbCc 

 + 2aBCc -f 2abCc-f 2ABbC + 2ABbe + 

 2aBbc+2aBbC+2AaBC+2AaBc + 2AabC 

 +2Aabc+4ABbCc-f 4aBbCc + 4AaBCc + 

 4AabCc-f4AaBbC+4AaBbc+8AaBbCc. 



The individual represented by three 

 letters will breed true, while those repre- 

 sented by four or more letters will give 

 fresh combinations in the next generation. 

 We see, therefore, that where there are but 

 three pairs of unit characters we get 27 

 combinations in a series of 60 individuals, 

 and that eight of the combinations, each 

 represented by one individual, may become 

 permanent types. The remaining 56 indi- 

 viduals of the series are unstable. 



There is another method by which the 

 probable results of a cross may be calcu- 

 lated. If n equals the number of pairs 

 characters (units) under consideration, then 

 3 to the nth power will give the number of 

 terms in the series; 4 to the nth. will give 

 the number of units in the series, while 2 to 

 the wth will give the number of individuals, 

 all different, whose characters will remain 

 fixed. 



If we take the letters ABC, abc, in the 

 above formula to represent the color, nec- 

 tar-gathering qualities, and temper of two 

 races of bees, we see that the odds are 

 against the reappearance of the original 

 races, although something resembling them 

 may sometimes crop up. It should be borne 



