228 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 
treatment, the results will often be extremely dis- 
similar; and while I know, from careful investigation, 
that these disparities are occasionally the result of 
unhealthy conditions, from which some stocks have 
suffered and others not (for bees are subject to dis- 
eases in a variety, and with a frequency, of which 
the bee world has been ignorant, as I intend more 
fully explaining hereafter), yet generally the diver- 
gencies follow from variations in the bees themselves, 
which variations, if philosophically handled, open up 
possibilities to the apiculture of the future, of 
which, at present, we have little idea. In a certain 
sense, the queen, or, more truly, the queen and 
the drone with which she has consorted, are the stock. 
In a measure, this has been some years recognised, 
and many a queen has suffered decapitation because 
of the naughty ways of her children ; but if in 
temper she multiplies herself in her progeny, it is 
equally true that she is the medium by which every 
other quality and capacity is made to inhere in the 
colony which she heads. 
Returning to our hypothetical stocks, we find one, it 
may be both in population and in wealth, forging rapidly 
ahead of the rest. We tier section rack upon section 
rack, and still the bees hold on filling the space 
given to them ; and when the honey-season closes, 
we discover we have a magnificent result, beating our 
record, and giving us, perhaps, a reputation for bee- 
mastership which we little deserve. The next stock, 
possibly, after refusing our sections, swarmed and 
swarmed again, and so has made us the proud 
possessors of a little string of new colonies, with 
