THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 227 



Begin with the best you can get. If you are afraid of con- 

 sanguinity, buy two queens, if possible from ditTerent breeders. But 

 after you have once begun do not introduce any more foreign stock. 



There is no need of taking the trouble to raise the drones from 

 any particular queen. If all the queens of the apiary are daughters 

 of good queens their drones will be of that stock, and that is as far 

 as we can go. We have so limited control over the mating 

 that we can do little along this line. The appearance, shape, size 

 and color of a horse or a bull may give ns an idea of what his 

 descendants will be, but there is nothing in the make-up of a drone 

 that can give us a clue as to what honey gathering or other quali- 

 ties his progeny will possess except the color. 



When I first began bee-keeping, I was very careful to cut out 

 the drone comb and trap the useless drones. As long as I was buy- 

 ing what few queens I needed it worked well, but when I began to 

 raise queens myself there was trouble. Many queens turned up 

 missing, and of those who didn't, the majority mated late or mis- 

 mated. A few failed to mate and, of course, became drone layers. 

 I should say here that there are but very few colonies belonging- to 

 other people in the neighborhood of my apiaries. 



About that time one of our professional queen breeders stopped 

 here on his way to Texas. He told me at once that I did not have 

 enough drones. In order to have the queens mate promptly it is 

 necessary to have enough drones to fill the neighborhood properly, 

 if I may use that expression. The queens may have to go out sev- 

 eral times before they meet a drone. And their chance of being 

 picked up by a bird or otherwise lost is increased in proportion. 



Queen Cell Building. 



The process is easy enough. Have a queenless colony build 

 the cells and raise the queen. Take a frame of brood of your 

 selected stock, mostly eggs if possible, cut in it oblong holes right 

 under a portion containing eggs or at most very young larvae, and 

 put it in the queenless colony. The cuts can be of any length, but 

 should be of sufficient width to give room for big, long queen cells, 

 and enough room for the bees to pass under and all aroimd. It has 

 been said that the smallest queen cells are big enough to lodge the 

 largest queens, but nevertheless it is the large cells that conram the 

 largest and best queens. AMiile there are occasionally exceptions, 

 the largest queens are the best ; probably because their ovaries are 

 more perfectly developed. Mr. Hasty thinks that more food is 

 given them m the large cells simply because there is more room 

 for it. and that when they have a large quantity of food they use 

 only the liquid and more perfect portions of it, while if there is less 



