GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



CONVERSATIONS with DOOLITTLE 



At Borodino, New York 



CLIPPING queens' wings DETRI- 

 MENTAL TO THEIR PROGENY? 



"Did you apiarists who advocate 

 clipping the wings of queen bees 

 ever stop to think that such a 

 course might prove detrimental to 

 their offspring, the workers'? I 

 should fear that such a course might in time 

 be the means of producing worker bees with 

 weakened or deficient wings, and thus the 

 ' best bees ' we are working for might be 

 crippled in wing power." 



This is something that was written about 

 quite generally thirty to forty years ago, as 

 at that time natural swarming was the gen- 

 eral mode of increase, and Avith undipped 

 queens swarms were liable to get away. To 

 obviate this, the clipping of every queen 

 was advocated by beekeepers in all parts of 

 the world. I remember at that time this 

 same question came up and one writer told 

 us that he had worked along that line for 

 forty years with his sheep, clipping the tails 

 from his lambs when they were small in 

 the hope of getting a breed of tailless sheep. 

 In spite of his desires every lamb that was 

 born always had a perfect tail. I know that 

 wonders have been accomplished by way of 

 changing the color of sheep from the black 

 of the original to that of white, and also the 

 character of their wool from coarse to fine, 

 and that of the form of the Southdown with 

 a smooth skin to that of the Merino with its 

 fine wool and folded or wrinkled skin. 



It seems to be quite generally assumed 

 that it would be as easy to change the char- 

 acteristics of the worker bee by the selec- 

 tion of queens and drones as it would be to 

 change the characteristics of other domestic 

 animals by the selection of parents. In the 

 latter case the parents transmit to a greater 

 or less degree their habits, faculties, pecul- 

 iarities and desires to their progeny, but 

 that can hardly be said in the case of the 

 honeybee, especially wlien the progeny is a 

 worker. The worker bee presents something 

 along the line of heredity somewhat differ- 

 ent from any of our domestic animals. 

 Here is something which our evolutionist 

 friends have not seen fit to tackle. The 

 worker bees are passionately fond of gath- 

 ering and storing honey and pollen, defend- 

 ing their homes with energy and patriotism 

 as well as performing all the other work 

 that falls to their lot, yet none of their 

 ancestors on either side for untold genera- 

 tions has had either the desire or the ability 

 to defend their home or lay up stores for 

 winter or a rainy day. I am not an evolu- 



tionist, but it seems that some of our past 

 theorizing in regard to working for the 

 best bees may have been of little value. Is 

 there not something here that should receive 

 attention in discussing the question of 

 breeding bees up to the highest standard in 

 respect to honey-gathering, wax secretion, 

 white capping of combs, hardiness in win- 

 tering, or eliminating disposition to swarm, 

 or weakening the workers' power of flight 

 by clipping queens' wings? He who should 

 undertake to create so great a difference 

 among worker bees in outward appearance 

 as there is in domestic fowls between the 

 monster Brahma and the diminutive ban- 

 tam would doubtless be considered rash. 

 Then why should he be thought to stand on 

 safer gi'ound when he undertakes to make 

 as gi'eat a difference among colonies- of bees 

 in respect to desire to swarm as there exists 

 between the Rhode Island Red and the 

 White Leghorn in respect to inclination to 

 incubate? And as the inclination to sit is 

 far from being bred out of the Leghorn, how 

 much less than reckless should he be thought 

 who undertakes to breed out of the honey- 

 bee the desire to swarm altogether? Is this 

 not also applicable to the attempt to length- 

 en the tongue of the worker bee so that 

 one or two one-thousandths of an inch may 

 be added so that the nectar in the red-clover 

 blossoms can be reached? To me it has 

 always seemed that the reaching of the 

 nectar in the red-clover bloom could far 

 more easily be obtained by a crossing of 

 the different clovers thru pollenization or 

 selection of those stalks for seed from roots 

 giving the shortest corolla. If the red 

 clover bloomed here to an extent sufficient 

 for seed I should have tried such a selection 

 years ago. But thru hundreds of very mi- 

 nute worms taking their abode in the red- 

 clover heads just prior to its blooming, few 

 if any corollas appear. 



But to return : By a like course of rea- 

 soning, as with the poultry, what possible 

 ground for fear can there be that clipping 

 the wing of a queen will weaken the power 

 of the worker progeny to fly? If the fact 

 that for many thousands of years at the 

 very least the queen bee as well as the drone 

 has neither exercised nor had the power to 

 gather honey and pollen from the flowers, 

 has neither destroyed nor weakened the 

 desire and the ability of the worker bee to 

 perform that labor, we may safely dismiss 

 any fears we may have harbored that the 

 clipping of the queen's wing will in any 

 wav affect the usefulness of her workeis. 



