210 THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW 
year by year, and the perpetuation of the race left 
to those stocks which had proved themselves 
malingerers and half-hearts. 
There was also another way in which this system 
worked wholly for the bad. If a Rive of bees 
reached burning-time with a fully charged store- 
house, it was probably due to the fact that the stock 
had cast no swarm that year, and had, therefore, 
preserved its whole force of workers for honey- 
getting. Under the light of modern knowledge, 
any stall of bees that Showed a lessened tendency 
towards swarming would be carefully set aside, 
and used as the mother-hive for future generations; 
for this habit of swarming, necessary under the old 
dispensation, is nothing else than a fatal drawback 
under the new. The scientific bee-master of to-day, 
with his expanding brood-chambers and his system 
of supplying his hives artificially with young and 
prolific queens every third year, has no manner of 
use for the old swarming-habit. It serves but to 
break up and hopelessly to weaken his stocks just 
when he has got them to prime working feitle. 
Although the honey-bee still clings to this ancient 
impulse, there is no doubt that selective cultivation 
will ultimately evolve a race of bees in which the 
swarming-fever shall have been much abated, if not 
wholly extinguished; and then the problem of 
cheap English honey will have been solved. But 
in ancient times the bee-gardens were replenished 
only from those hives wherein the swarming-fever 
was most rampant. The old bee-keepers, in con- 
signing all their heavy stocks to the sulphur-pit, 
unconsciously did their best to exterminate all non- 
swarming strains, 
