14 HOW TO KEEP BEES 



A TESTED QUEEN 



As the queen is the mother of the whole colony, her 

 powers for transmittmg a kind disposition and 

 superior honey-making qualities are of the greatest 

 importance. It is essential, therefore, to know that 

 the queen, which is to serve as a foundation for the 

 apiary, has mated with a drone of the desired race. 

 A tested queen is one that has been kept until some 

 of her offspring have been reared. The colour of 

 these will indicate whether the queen has mated with 

 a drone of her own race. 



THE HIVE 



Next to choosing the bees comes the selection of 

 the hive, for there are several kinds of hives in gen- 

 eral use, and all of them are apparently good. We 

 chose the Langstroth hive because its merits are 

 attested by the fact that it is more largely used than 

 all others taken together. We chose the eight-frame 

 in preference to the ten-frame form because we 

 wished to produce comb-honey, and it is easier to 

 induce bees to store surplus in the sections when the 

 brood-chamber is small. If one wishes to produce 

 extracted honey, the ten-frame hive is the better 

 one. We ordered the more expensive chaff hives, 

 as we wished to save the trouble of moving the bees 

 into winter quarters; and we think this would be 

 the case with anyone with whom bee-keeping is an 

 avocation instead of a vocation. In fact many peo- 



