Cooperative Work with Columbia University 425 



This is the time when the expert tactics of the experienced 

 beekeeper come to the rescue and turn defeat into victory, by 



preventing the scattering or 

 separating of the working 

 force and persuading the 

 fifty thousand able-bodied 

 working bees to continue on 

 the job and abandon their 

 foolish notion of swarming 

 just then in the busy season. 

 There are methods of con- 

 trolling the natural impulse 

 of bees to swarm, and also a 

 B^*'^*"'''^ great difference of opinion 



Fig. 567.— Hive with Movable Frame among beekeepers as to how 



this may best be done. One 

 essential condition is plenty of room in the hive, so as to avoid 

 congestion of the brood chamber. To maintain this condilion it 

 is necessary to examine the brooding departments at fre<]iiciit inter- 

 vals and manipulate them as our experience has pr!oved beneficial. 



After the swarming season has passed, 

 bees will continue breeding and gathering 

 stores. But the queen gradually slackens 

 her egg-laying, and at the approach of cold 

 weather she stops laying, while the bees 

 cluster in a compact form and remain so 

 until early spring. These natural develop- 

 ments transpire in a colony of bees every 

 year, and, to be successful, the beekeeper 

 must be familiar with them. 



NECESSARY APPLIANCES 



The advance in l)ee culture has given us 

 the hive with movable frame, the honey 

 extractor, and comb foundation. An up- 

 to-date hive should combine three essen- 

 tial characteristics: 



1. Brood frames so constructed that they can be easily removed 

 and replaced without injury to the combs or bees. 





Fig. 568. — i\[AciiiNE Fon 

 Extracting Honey 

 Froji C'oiic. 



