Why should the male bee be so maligned? Why should he be a Cain amongst his brethren. everyone trying to slay him? Why should he be an Ishmael bee that every man's hand is against? Amongst other domesticated animals the males are regarded as of the first importance. Their owners are as proud, and in some cases even prouder of the pedigree of their choice sires than they are of their own genealogical records. Sires always fetch a much higher figure in the market than dams. It is the same in the feathered race. A rooster is worth no more for the table, weight for weight, than a hen. In the yard he is not nearly so valuable. A hen will lay without him, and the eggs are equally good, if not more so, for table purposes. It is the same with other high-class domestic animals. If a man wishes to obtain a name for himself as a breeder of high-class animals, he spares no expense to obtain high-class sires. The dams are looked upon as secondary. Why! The sire is one with many,and the dam with one. The type of the sire is gradually transmitted through the whole herd. Generations afterwards the throwbacks can be pointed out as carrying the typical form and traits of character of a favourite ancestor. Every care is bestowed upon the sires; it is they that are so advertised. In the show parades it is the sires that are the observed of all observers. When we come to bees the scene changes. We never hear the remark, Where is the drone? but, Which is the queen? If the sire amongst quadrupeds is one among many, transmitting all his good points among the many, how much more so is the case with drones? With the quadruped every descendant is the result of one or more matings between two animals. With bees how different. It is one, and only one, mating between two individuals, as will be seen by referring to the section on the queen bee. But how different the result of that single mating. It produces hundreds of thousands of descendants. More remarkable still, the mating of drone and queen results in a progeny of \(all\) females. Do not mistake me. I know that queen bees produce a mixture of sexes. But the males are not the result of the mating with \(her\) consort, \(i.e.\), the one that produced the progeny resulting in all females. The male progeny are the outcome of the mating of a previous generation. How can I tell? A golden Italian queen (\(a\)) mismatches--that is, she has come in contact with a black drone (an English bee). What is the result? All the females (workers and queens) are what we should expect them to be, cross-breds, usually termed hybrids; and if the queen is from a pure stock with Italian blood running in her veins for two or three generations back, the _males_ she produces are all pure Italians without a taint of black blood visible or invisible. Again, a pure-bred English queen (\(b\)) with two or three generations of black blood in her veins mates with a full-blood Italian drone (\(b\)) resulting in a female progeny of cross-breds as with the queen (\(a\)), but the males are full-blood blacks. Now let a perfect and complete female bee (\(a2\)), being an immediate and direct descendant from the queen (\(a\)), mate with another black drone. Of course, it will neither be drone (\(a\)) or drone (\(b\)), because that would be an impossibility; drone (\(a\)) and drone (\(b\)) having died immediately after mating, as is always the case. This was fully explained in a previous page on the queen bee. The result of the foundation of the queen bee (\(a2\)) is that all the female progeny have more black blood (three-fourths) in them than their mother;but the males have the same amount (one-half only). The female progeny from the queen (\(a2\)) is the result of her mating with the second-named black drone--her consort; but the males are the result of the mating between the first-named black drone and the queen (\(a\)). Again, let a perfect and complete female bee --a queen (\(2\)\(b\)) - also being an immediate and direct descendant from the queen (\(b\)), mate with a full-blood Italian drone. The result of the contact is that all the female progeny have more Italian blood in them (three-fourths) than their mother; but the males--the drones--have the same amount (one-half only); so it goes on with every succeeding generation. The female progeny of every queen is the result of _her_ fecundation; but her male progeny is the result of the queen's mother's fecundation. Is this a case of partial parthenogenesis--production without immediate fecundation; or is it a case of atavism--a throwback?