70 A Modern Bee-Farm 
Unrestricted or indiscriminate swarming, as hitherto 
generally practised, and the use of drones and queens 
from many different mothers in the same apiary, are 
non-progressive practices, absolutely at variance with 
all true principles of breeding. 
CHAPTER VI. 
BREEDING PEDIGREE. STOCK IN DIRECT 
LINE. 
DRONE-MOTHERS SELECTED AND REGISTERED 
AS WELL AS QUEEN-MOTHERS. 
N aiming to obtain the highest possible results as 
regards quantity and quality of produce, it is 
absolutely necessary that all queens be carefully 
bred in a definite line from the best stock only; selecting 
not only the queen-mother, but the drone parent also, in 
the manner carried out by the Author for many years, 
and here fully explained for the first time. 
Where the apiarist allows natural swarming, or saves 
swarming queens from any stock that has queen-cells 
handy, he, is always crossing and re-crossing his previous 
land-marks—if he ever had any. He is like a ship without 
a rudder, swaying here and there just as the wind likes to 
carry him. He is as often going backward as forward, 
and can never fix upon a definite line of breeding. 
And yet some of the most prominent bee-keepers will 
say there is no way of securing a fixed type, or fixed 
qualities in any strain of bees without isolation of the 
breeding stock on some island, or a spot where no other 
bees are known for a radius of ten miles or so. 
