THOUSAND ANSWERS 
169 
with a select tested queen, a select untested queen has nothing but 
her looks to entitle her to a higher price, for nothing can yet be 
told about the looks of her unborn progeny, to say nothing about 
the performance of the same. 
A breeder is one that is considerably better than the average, 
and so, of unusual value to breed from. 
You will sec that there is chance for a good deal of looseness 
in the whole business, especially as good looks and good behavior 
do not always go together. “Handsome is that handsome does.” 
Q. Is there any way to tell how good the queen is in a weak 
colony, during brood-rearing? 
A. No. She may lay enough eggs to keep a weak colony sup- 
plied, but not enough for a strong colony. Yet even in a weak 
colony a very poor queen may not keep the cells filled with eggs 
in an orderly manner, but will skip more or less cells. Even in 
a strong colony you cannot tell how good a queen is merely by 
looking at her brood. The most prolific queen is not by any 
means always the best. To learn how good a queen is you must 
wait to see how much honey her bees will store compared with 
others. 
Q. I put a full depth super on top of one of my colonies, and 
an examination afterwards showed the queen was rearing brood 
very extensively in the upper story, and later on I examined the 
lower story and found that she had deserted it altogether, and 
the cells were all full of pollen. Could you tell how this could be 
avoided ? 
A. A queen-excluder of perforated zinc will prevent the 
queen from going up. 
Q. Will strange queens sometimes unite with a quecnlcss 
colony? 
A. Yes, sometimes it happens that a young queen may go into 
another hive than her own. 
Q. One morning I found six dead queens in front of the 
hives. Why do they have so many queens? 
A. Nature generally makes bountiful provision against dan- 
ger of failure. Take an apple tree, one that is thoroughly filled 
with blossoms. What if every blossom should produce an apple? 
If there’s one apple for every ten blossoms there will be a heavy 
crop. But if there should be merely enough blossoms for each 
expected apple, something might happen to a good many of them, 
and there would be a shortage in the crop. Same way with the 
bees. Hundreds of drones are reared for every one needed, so 
