The American Apiculturist Vol Iii No 6 June 15 1885 A Journal Devoted To Scientific And Practical Beekeeping PDF Download

Excerpt from The American Apiculturist, 1888, Vol. 6: A Journal Devoted to Scientific and Practical Beekeeping It has not only been haphazard mating, but every form of in breeding has gone on uninterruptedly. The wonder is that the bee of the present time has not degenerated from the good old stock of a thousand years ago. Now I shall assert that what is true of the human race and of the higher animals is also true as applied to the honey bee. In-and-in breeding is productive of evil in the animal and vegetable kingdoms throughout and there are no exceptions to the general rules anywhere. A single cross of near relatives is productive of little mischief; it is the repeated crosses of near relatives that cause evil. In early times we have many recorded instances of the union of near relatives in marriage. Moses was a son of a brother and sister, but by him came the law doing away with the intermarrying of near relatives. Thus, the evils of the practice were early perceived and they were abated for the benefit of the race. Barrenness was one of the notable results. In the vegetable kingdom, the universality of the law against the uniting of near relatives is made manifest in non-productiveness, and it has long been one of the most potent arguments of beekeepers in the interest of the honey bee that it was one of the chief agents in effecting the cross-fertilization of flowers, thus aiding directly in promoting the productiveness of all kinds of fruit trees. I shall make the point that everywhere in nature the highest order of fertility is where cross-fertilization is possible. In other words, hermaphrodite generation is opposed to great productiveness wherever found. The uniting of brother and sister is a form of hermaphrodite generation and the disposition, as we have seen, is toward barrenness. My experience with queens mated to nearly related drones is that the prolificness is impaired, and continued in-breeding results in queens that are wholly worthless to the practical beekeeper. On the contrary, every radical cross and every queen mated to an unrelated drone has been normally prolific and many of them remarkably so. In addition to this fact the working quality is perceptibly augmented. It has also appeared that the workers were longer lived, showing greater vitality. I think we shall find that the impairment of vitality from too close breeding will be manifest, not in sickly bees, but in comparatively short-lived bees. The farther we pursue this line of investigation, the more we shall find to convince us that the greatest success in our efforts to improve the honey bee both as to the prolificness of queens and the vigor and working qualities of the workers will be where we make crosses of the best unrelated queens and drones. If, in addition to this, we make individual selection we shall be certain of success and the "coming bee" will soon be in the range of possibility. A plan to this end has already been inaugurated by D. A. Jones, G. M. Doolittle, Abbott L. Swinson and myself in sending out virgin queens to be mated in distant apiaries. Surely, there will be no mistake in getting queens mated to unrelated drones by this method. Very satisfactory results the past season have already been noted by Mr. Doolittle from this practice. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com