June, 1917 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



437 



full and exjilicil answer as to how that is 

 dene. Unfortunately he has not clone so, 

 being satisfied to give us " a few funda- 

 mental biolos'ioal laws," the knowledge of 

 which I am afraid is sadly lacking, and in 

 giving them Mv. Phillips has done a real 

 sendee. 



The matter is one of such immense im- 

 portance that I may be allowed to do the 

 best I can at giving an answer, trusting to 

 Mr. Phillips or some one else to make any 

 emendations needed. For that matter I 

 should like to see the inatter fully discussed 

 without any I'eference to anything I may 

 say. 



At the outset, in trying to follow Mr. 

 Phillips' teachings I find a difiiculty in his 

 classification. He says: "There are two 

 kinds of people who purchase queens : 

 those who buy for breeding, and those who 

 buy yearly for honey - gathering ; just 

 possibly it might be a good thing if they 

 were divided into those two classes. As a 

 matter of fact I don't believe they are. I 

 doubt if one beekeeper in fifty of those who 

 buy queens buys them yearly Avith no 

 thought of rearing any queens liimself. I 

 know for certain of only one such, and he's 

 a man of high standing as a honey-pro- 

 ducer. 



But why limit our consideration to queens 

 that are bought f In comparison Avith the 

 rest of queens in existence they are fe^v 

 indeed. 



I suppose that the great majority of 

 beekeepers rear queens having in mind the 

 honey to be secured from each, with perhaps 

 little thought of improvement of stock. My 

 idea is that, Avith the exception of that 

 small class who buy all their queens yearly, 

 every beekeeper should striA'e for improve-, 

 ment, even if he neA^er buys nor sells a 

 queen. In other words, everj' honey-pro- 

 clucer should be a breeder as Avell; other- 

 Avise he'll get left in the long run in the 

 matter of crops. The practical question 

 noAv is, hoAv shall he select the queers from 

 which he breeds? 



"We are told that we m.ay have a queen. 

 say we call her A, of poor lineage, but so 

 well reared that she gives a big surplus. 

 Another, B, of veiy superior stock, is so 

 handicapped in some way that she giA^es 

 only half the surplus A does; but if she 

 had had the same chance as A she Avould 

 haA-e excelled A in surplus. Clearly B is 

 the better queen to breed from. But hoAv 

 are Ave going to select her? I don't knoAV. 

 Mr. Phillijjs doesn't tell us. 



To be sure, I can think of a case in 

 which there Avould be no difficulty. A 

 might be the best in an apiary Avhei'e nil 



were scrubs and B a queen, or an immedi- 

 ate descendant of a queen of best quality 

 obtained from a reliable breeder, in which 

 case, no matter hoAV much B should fall 

 slioi't of A in the amount of stores, B should 

 be the one to breed from. And, in general, 

 it may be said a queen bought for the im- 

 provement of stock can hardly be fairly 

 judged by the amount of suri^lus she yields, 

 since her journey in the mails and the 

 possible shock of introduction may leave 

 her incapable of showing how good blood 

 she really i>ossesses. 



Such cases, hoAvever, are exceptional. 

 Let us get back to the usual, the man with 

 25, 50, or more colonies, whose queens are 

 reared in his own apiary. The important 

 thing, just now, is to advise him hoAv to 

 select the queen or queens from which he 

 shall breed. Suppose that A has given him 

 the biggest yield. This, as already inti- 

 mated, after taking into account any known 

 advantages or disadvantages, such as tak- 

 ing or giA'ing brood or bees at the time of 

 building up. But suppose another queen, 

 B, if she had had the same chance as A, 

 AA'ould have excelled. Then certainly it is 

 better to breed from B than from A. But 

 hoAv is the beekeeper to knoAv that, given 

 the same cliance, B would have stored more 

 than A? Can he properly estimate what 

 should be credited to the queen on the 

 score of her handicaps? As such handi- 

 caps, Mr. Phillips mentions eld age, the 

 loss of a leg, and poor nutrition in the larval 

 stage. The matter of old age hardly pre- 

 sents any difficulty, for the old queen's 

 record that she made before she Avas old 

 still stands to her credit or discredit. I 

 may remark in passing that one of my very 

 best yielders last year, 1916, had a queen 

 reared in 1913. You may rest assured that 

 if she is still alive in the summer of 1917 

 her age Avill not be counted against her. 



If a queen is minus a leg, Avhether from 

 birth or by accident, hoAV is that handicap 

 to be estimated? I don't know how we 

 can tell. Possibly it is a very serrious 

 handicap in some cases, yet I've had five- 

 legged queens that were excellent layers. 

 But I know of no way of telling by look- 

 ing at the place Avhere the missing leg 

 ought to be how much better she AA'ould have 

 laid, or whether at all better, if she had 

 had another leg. 



If B's smaller surplus is due to im- 

 proper larval nourishment, how much are 

 Ave to tally for that? The lack of proper 

 nourishment may have been little or great, 

 and it's such an intangible thing that I for 

 one give it up. 



Perhaps it may not seem presumptuous in 



