QUEEN-REARING IN ENGLAND. 65 



only practicable one in England (the reciprocal cross, golden 

 (J by black 2 , being only a chance production), the colonies 

 are very populous because they are headed by golden queens, 

 which are more prolific than, blacks. An undesirable con- 

 sequence of crossing bees is the development of an increased 

 tendency to sting, but in this particular cross the temper is 

 usually good, though it becomes hotter in later generations 

 when the black colour predominates. 



Reference has been made to the coupling of factors. 

 Colour characters are often associated with various qualities 

 of a useful nature or the reverse. Punnet states that the 

 National Portrait Gallery furnishes remarkable evidence of 

 this in man. Here the pictures of celebrated men and women 

 are largely grouped according to the vocations in which they 

 have succeeded. It is rare to find anything but blue eyes 

 among the soldiers and sailors, while among the actors, 

 preachers, and orators the dark eye is predominant, although 

 for the population as a whole it is far scarcer than the light. 



In the honey-bee several qualities are associated with 

 the golden and black colours. The goldens are more pro- 

 lific, they are also less hardy and smaller. They make a 

 peculiar singing sound when they are smoked. These char- 

 acters I have found inseparable from goldens. It is said 

 that goldens are greater robbers than blacks, and that they 

 distribute themselves more to neighbouring hives, but this 

 I have not proved, and it is certain that they are more often 

 detected doing these things on account of their bright out- 

 standing colour than they would be if they resembled the 

 bees whose hives they enter. 



As regards desirable utility characters that are separately 

 inherited, we are not in the near future likely to make 

 much progress in unravelling the factors that stand for 

 them, and even if we could do so, how can we fix them 

 without controlling mating by isolation ? In England there 

 seems to be only one way, namely, by getting the character 

 in our golden bee. During the last few years I have been 

 trying to fix certain desirable qualities in my goldens. 

 Having found the desirable quality in a stock, one must be 

 prepared to sacrifice all one's other goldens in order to 

 give it a chance to get fixed. 



By, every year, wintering 30 to 50 of the purely mated 

 British golden queens bred the previous year, carefully 



F2 



