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14 A TESTED QUEEN

As the queen is the mother of the whole colony, her powers for transmitting a kind disposition and superior honey-making qualities are of the greatest importance. It is essential, therefore, to know that the queen, which is to serve as a foundation for the apiary, has mated with a drone of the desired race. A tested queen is one that has been kept until some of her offspring have been reared. The colour of these will indicate whether the queen has mated with a drone of her own race.

THE HIVE

Next to choosing the bees comes the selection of the hive, for there are several kinds of hives in general use, and all of them are apparently good. We chose the Langstroth hive because its merits are attested by the fact that it is more largely used than all others taken together. We chose the eight-frame in preference to the ten-frame form because we wished to produce comb-honey, and it is easier to induce bees to store surplus in the sections when the brood-chamber is small. If one wishes to produce extracted honey, the ten-frame hive is the better one. We ordered the more expensive chaff hives, as we wished to save the trouble of moving the bees into winter quarters; and we think this would be the case with anyone with whom bee-keeping is an avocation instead of a vocation. In fact many