208 AUSTRALASIAN 
CHeAe oi iaing oil, 
QUEEN REARING. 
NECESSITY OF THE PRACTICE. 
In order to obtain good results from the apiary we must, as a 
matter of course, have good bees and plenty of them; and in 
order to have good bees we must first of all have good queens 
to breed from. ‘That there is often a vast dissimilarity in the 
characteristic qualities of different colonies in the same apiary, 
no one who has had even a short experience will deny. How 
often do we find the bees of some colonies constantly irritable 
and disposed to sting, while those of others may be handled 
with impunity ; or some giving a good return of honey, while 
others are doing little or nothing. Such cases may be seen in 
every apiary where a careful breeding of queens has not been 
systematically carried out. That itis possible, on the other 
hand, by means of such a system, to develop to a greater 
extent the good qualities, and to breed out the bad ones in 
the honey-bee, is no longer a matter of doubt. Such advanced 
apiarists as Alley, Heddon, Doolittle, and others in America, 
who have gone about the work in a conscientious as well as a 
scientific manner, have undoubtedly succeeded in developing a 
superior strain of bees. There is nothing to cause surprise in 
all this, when we consider the analogous case of the results 
obtained by select breeding of horses, cattle, and all our 
domestic animals. The breeder of bees has one advantage as 
compared with breeders of horses and cattle—he has not to 
wait so long for the results of his experiments ; the bee- keeper 
can do as much with his bees in the way of crossing and 
improving races in from four to five years as the cattle breeder 
could probably accomplish with his stock in twenty or thirty 
years. Considering the many advantages to be gained by 
cultivating the best qualities in our bees, I am induced to look 
