72 A Modern Bee-Farm 
previous year's queen breeder, using these for swamping the 
locality with drones, 
He will still use but one mother, not that of the former 
year, but a selected one from his own stock, or a tested 
queen purchased from a good strain, as the parent of his 
second year queens. 
Thus every year the apiarist will select a fresh extra 
tested queen for his current queen-breeder, and every 
following year he will use his previous year’s queen- 
breeder, or her selected daughters, for providing his drones. 
Thus: 
The mother of queens one year is the parent or 
grand-parent of drones the following year. 
In this way the owner is going straight ahead all the time 
through the one selected queen each season, with his drones 
following in the same line, so that he never loses any new 
blood he may select, or bring into the apiary. He is 
building up all the time, and whether he occasionally buys 
a high-class breeder for any year, or may pick out some 
extraordinary quéen already in his earlier line of breeding, 
he is getting full value, and is never looking back or 
jumping off the track. 
These selected direct-line queens, on both drone and 
queen sides, must of course be named, lettered or 
numbered, and a careful register maintained ; but it is 
useless to endeavour to name or register those not selected 
for breeding. 
One cannot keep in line with a lot of different queens 
each year; he is sure to come to grief in attempting it ; 
though of course two or three may be held in reserve in 
case of accident to one selected for the season. 
The foregoing is the method of breeding the Author has 
been carrying out for many years, and an outline of the 
