34 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTUHE 



nature has to play an important part, but the success of that 

 industry is the result of careful selection. 



The useful and profitable characteristics, both mental and 

 physical, in domesticated animals for ages past have been developed 

 by crossing and selecting of the fittest, and these traits are 

 always in the ascendency. The injurious mental traits and unpro- 

 fitable physical forms are being rapidly eliminated. 



It is the same in those members of the vegetable kingdom 

 that have become indispensable to man. But to return. 



What ones are we to select? "Like produces like." If we 

 find among our colonies of bees a swarm possessing a trait or 

 characteristic more to our ideal than is to be met with in any of 

 the others we should use every effort to perpetuate the valuable 

 qualities thus selected. 



In apiaries there are frequently hives of bees that "live into 

 themselves." They pull through winter, throw off a spring 

 swarm, and do well in summer and autumn, but not for the bee- 

 keeper. They have never sufficient honey to extract. It is 

 highly probable the queen is at fault. Destroy her and introduce 

 one from a hive that has the qualities you most admire. 



Swarm from your best colonies is a golden rule. Breed your 

 queens from the same is still more golden. The queen of every 

 swarm that is thrown off from a colony whose work is centred in 

 self should be at once destroyed, and one that is a direct descen- 

 dant from your best of colonies introduced. If this substitution 

 be impracticable unite the workers with some others, the weakest 

 you have, which has a queen from a pet colony. In no way be a 

 party to perpetuate a mental, physical, or industi"ial deformity. 



In artificial queen breeding select your larvae from your most 

 notable colony for surplus honey storage. Keep a debtor and 

 creditor account, a day-book and ledger of every hive you possess ; 

 perhaps a stud-book is the better term to use. 



If your new queen is to be the result of grafting a queen-coll 

 on the comb of a queenless colony you must be very careful in your 

 selection. Utilise one that is in a convenient position. Queoii- 

 cells are differently situated, sometimes on the edge of a comb, as 

 in C, or on the base or the side of the comb, and again as in D, 

 named an emergency cell. Under no circumstance use an emer- 

 gency cell. These cells are the result of a last hope of a queenless 

 colony, or of the mother bee from accident or infirmity ceasing to 

 produce worker eggs. Emergency cells are worker-cells trans- 

 formed into royal quarters. No queen-cell is better adapted for 



