THE Bi£E KEEPERS, REVIEW. 



41 



DANGERS OF INBREEDING. 



BY F. B. SIMPSON. 



They may not be so Great with Bees 



as with Higher Animals, but of 



this we are Uncertain. 



I'liiiiiis (ioiic wiiliout example, in Iheir 

 INHRHKIiING A SUCCESS IN ESTABTJSH- 

 ING STRAINS, ONI.V ONCE IN A 

 THOUSAND TIMES. 



RS a further reason why inbreeding 

 shouhl be avoided, except experi- 

 mentally, I will refer the reader to those 

 excellent quotations in Mr. Getaz' article 

 on page 362 ( Dec. Review). It will there 

 be noted that in a very few rare cases, 

 perhaps one man in a thousand has had 

 the good fortune to possess one animal in 

 a thousand that fa%-ored the foundation 

 of a race, breed or strain by the employ- 

 ment of inbreeding. Races, strains and 

 breeds having thus been founded, 

 they were very naturally dependent upon 

 their method of foundation for their con- 

 tinuence; so that later breeders have 

 found it necessary to follow in the foot- 

 steps of their predecessors. Even assum- 

 ing that the same laws would apply to 

 bees, is it reasonable to ask the rank and 

 file of bee-keepers to improve their bees 

 by inbreeding, when we practically have 

 not yet even obtained a well definetl 

 breed or strain? Is it safe to put the prop- 

 Ojition in this way, when the chances 

 tor success are against all but the thou- 

 SHudth man with the thousandth bee? 

 What proportion of bee-keepers have 

 had sufficient success in inbreeding, even 

 the most vegetative of the domestic ani- 

 mals, to enable them to successfully cope 

 with the vastly more subtle and compli- 

 cated problems concerning the individual 

 and communal character of the bee? 



Inbreeding has done us remarkable 

 service in improving our domestic ani- 



issue are to be feared — .SHAKi:sri:ARE, 



mals. The first improvement is usually 

 obtained by crossing a highly prepotent 

 male, with females of lower breeding, and 

 thus less prepotent. The produce mostly 

 resembles the male, and thus we get uni- 

 formity. By continuing this process we 

 eventually get our females of so high a 

 grade of breeding, and with so many inbred 

 crosses, that no one short of the "eminent 

 breeder" described in my quotation from 

 Darwin (page 268, SeptemVjer Review ) can 

 succeed in obtaining the uniformity that 

 he desires; and that in the relatively 

 poorer generations, was easily obtained 

 by reason of the "prepotence" of the 

 male which is now in opposition to the 

 added prepotence of the female. But in 

 the bee. where but one mating is possible, 

 we have no such conditions; for it will 

 not sufTice to use brothers instead of the 

 satne individual. We do not even know 

 the relative difference between the hered- 

 itary qualities of the drone and the queen, 

 or even between the drone from a virgin 

 queen and one that has mated; we are en- 

 tering an unknoivn territory, and I be- 

 lieve the average bee-keeper would ob- 

 tain the best results by having the prob- 

 lem made as primitive and simple as 

 po.ssible. 



MATING UNRi;i.ATED SPECIMENS GIVES 

 GREATER CHANCES FOR SELECTION. 

 It is very probable that the nearer nat- 

 ural conditions we can get, the more we 

 will find that the produce of two unrelat 

 ted bees will resemble each parent most 

 equally. Starting on this simple princi- 

 ple we can in this way most easily trace 



