=Watchfulness and Intelligence.=--These two qualities are essential assets to any would-be successful bee-keeper. There is no "golden rule," for his guidance through the year, nothing that must be done invariably at stated times and seasons. It is here that the novice is puzzled and perplexed, for apparently what is right at one time becomes wrong at another, but it is only by experience that the guiding knowledge is acquired. For instance, it is useless to feed a hive with the view to increase the brood, if the hive be queenless, or possesses a drone-breeding queen, or a fertile worker. And again, it is useless to put a super on a queenless stock or a weak hive, for instead of helping to conserve the heat of the hive one but adds to the area for the bees to heat with their own little bodies, with the additional risk of chilling the brood and starving the bees. For it should be remembered that the colder the hive, the greater the consumption of food by the bees. _It is well to bear in mind that the best of all heat-producers in a hive are the bees themselves, but to enable them satisfactorily to become so suitable accommodation and food are absolutely necessary._ =The Queen.=--One of the greatest mysteries connected with the hive is the life history of the queen bee, and her position in the bee community. Each hive is, as it were, a republic of female workers, who serve with slavish devotion one of their number set apart from birth for the position of supreme head of the community. Like their sex generally throughout Nature, they give of their best where it is most needed. They know by their instinct that if the queen is fed with rich food her egg-laying capacity is stimulated, and, on the contrary, when the honey-flow is finished, that the supply of such food must be checked, with a consequent reduction in the number of eggs laid. They know that the greater the population of the hive the greater the drain on their honey store. Generally speaking the life of a queen bee extends from two to five years, at which age she is generally exhausted, or is deposed by the community in favour of a younger queen. The egg from which a queen bee develops is at the first precisely similar to that which produces a worker, and both are fertile. It all depends upon the kind of cell in which the egg is deposited by the queen whether a mere worker or a royal offspring ensues. The queen cells are acorn shaped, and larger in size than the others and are generally placed on the edge of the comb. It is when the eggs are hatched--three days after they have been placed in the cells--that the special treatment of the queen grub commences. It is taken charge of by the nurses and fed with the rich food--known as "chyle" food (see page 50), and it is this food alone that produces the difference between a queen and a worker bee.