QUEEN-REARING IN ENGLAND. 69 



scutellum and the abdomen almost to the tip yellow, and 

 that a queen thus coloured had never been known to produce 

 a black worker, oppose this view. On the other hand, up 

 to 1908, golden queens, with the scutellum darkened, were 

 occasionally produced, and black workers were often bred 

 from these, indicating they were heterozygous. But latterly 

 the separation between golden and intermediate has been 

 more complete, and such queens have not been produced. 



This incomplete separation is additional evidence of the 

 presence of more than, one factor for colour. In review of 

 the situation, the production by a golden queen of dark 

 drones cannot be said, in the light of our present know- 

 ledge of the inheritance of colour, to upset the universally 

 accepted and apparently well-founded theory that the drone 

 is always produced parthenogenetically, but, in view of the 

 fact that in all our efforts to breed bees this theory plays a 

 leading part in guiding the operations, such cases as this 

 that seem to shake it should receive the fullest investigation. 

 If we could control mating they would be certain to add 

 valuable facts to our knowledge of the inheritance of sex. 



Fig. 7 is of an Italian drone bred from a queen received 

 from Bologna. Some of the drones produced by this queen 

 had a more distinct tinge of yellow on the second segment, 

 but none showed so greaf an extent of yellow as that ex- 

 hibited by the British golden drone. It was the great 

 variation in the colouring of the Italian drone — some are 

 almost black — that led Perez's critics — for his statement 

 raised a storm of opposition — to reject his idea of hybridism. 



The inheritance of colour in the Italian bee is remark- 

 able in two ways. First, the workers all come perfectly 

 true to a colour pattern very like that of the cross between 

 golden and black, though somewhat darker as a rule, and 

 varying in different localities. Secondly, the queens, on the 

 contrary, show immense variation : some are almost as yellow 

 as goldens, though they lack the yellow scutellum and they 

 have at least traces of dark spots on the segments. Others 

 are broadly banded with black and have the last segments 

 black. Are these differences in the queen mere fluctuations, 

 or do they stand for factors in the gametes which do not 

 manifest themselves in the workers? 



