HOW TO ITALIANIZE COMMON STOCKS. 84 
while rearing our first installment of queens for the pur- 
pose of procuring pure Italian drones for the impregna- 
tion of our second installment, very few worker bees of the 
Italian race are to be found in the apiary: hence the 
young queens, as well as others, ave nursed by black and 
hybrid bees, producing in some way yet to be accounted fer, 
a degeneration towards the black race. 
The fact of such deterioration is admitted by those who 
have had the best of opportunities for judging, and can 
have no motive for misrepresentation. Although a few 
maintain that because dark colored queens sometimes 
produce as finely marked workers as the most brilliant 
ones, there is no degeneration ; forgetting that the char- 
acteristics of the workers are determined more by the im- 
pregnating drone than by the queen herself. 
Prof. Kirtland, of Cleveland, Ohio, one of the closest 
observers, has entirely failed, we are informed, through 
two years of careful experiments, to produce a single 
pure queen from Italian brood transferred to hives of com- 
mon becs. 
Prof. E. Kirby, of Henrietta, N. Y., in attempting to ac- 
count for this degeneration, suggests that the sperm or 
vitalizing fluid of the drone is perhaps supplied to the 
young larva while in process of transformation from 
a worker to a queen. 
Mr. Langstroth, in Bee Journal fur July, 1861, p. 166, 
although not admitting the point in issue, says : 
“It seems very singular that the larve, which if de- 
‘veloped as a worker would have been strongly colored, 
should in its transformation into a queen, lose all its bril- 
liant yellow.” 
Again, while rearing queens by the sae of the 
reigning one, from any hive, there are more or less drone 
