EXPERIMENT STATION REPORTS 107 



will contain sufficient brood to keep the colony up to the highest strength 

 desirable in this locality for fall and winter purposes. Suppose now the 

 clover and basswood season ends here, any given year, July 15th, it is 

 evident, since it requires thirty-five days from the laying of the egg to 

 mature a field worker, that all eggs laid in any colony in excess of the 

 number required to keep comb to the extent of five L. frames supplied 

 with brood can produce no bees that will prove of any practical utility. 

 During these thirty-five days — the height of the season — average queens 

 if allowed room, will keep eight frames filled with brood, and as it is for 

 nearly one and three-fourths generations, the total excess over the re- 

 quired five frames would amount to about five frames during the thirty- 

 five days at an expense of twenty pounds of honey or in an apiary of one 

 hundred colonies a matter of $200 to |250. If space permitted it would 

 be easy to mention one or two other items that would make the amount 

 considerably more. It would be comparatively easy to select a hive that 

 would secure the repression, if it were permissible at no time of the year 

 to allow more than five L. frames of brood, but it is just as imperative 

 that every cell possible be used previous to June 10th as that unnecessary 

 brood should be prevented after that date. The selection of a hive must 

 be made, therefore, first, with reference to the earlier period. 



In the production of extracted honey the size of the hive during this 

 period would not be very material, as honey in combs at the side of the 

 brood nest would be about as valuable as that in combs above it, but for 

 the production of comb honey it should be of such size as to give as 

 nearly as possible merely room for the brood and thus secure the storing 

 of the honey in the sections where it will be of double value. In this local- 

 ity only a small proportion of colonies would occupy more than eight L. 

 frames with brood prior to June 10th, so I deem a hive of greater capacity 

 than that objectionable for the production of comb honey. If the field 

 were lightly stocked with bees so that as large an increase as possible 

 were desirable for the gathering of the crop, each queen could be given 

 abundant room for the display of her powers by exchanging combs be- 

 tween the stronger and weaker colonies. 



This line of thought would seem to fix our choice of hives on the eight 

 frame Langstroth, but it has points which fail to give satisfaction when 

 it is proposed to put contraction in force, about June 10th. Still this 

 contraction, which, in practice, is largely confined to swarms, can be 

 accomplished with this hive by removing three of the frames and filling 

 the vacant space with dummies. This accomplishes the desired con- 

 traction but it also contracts the upper surface of the brood nest. This 

 is not desirable, since, for the best work in the sections, it is necessary 

 that the heat and the aroma of the brood nest should ascend freely to all 

 parts of the section case. 



At this point I am sometimes moved to pray those who are so sure they 

 can breed the swarming instinct out of the bees, to breed out also the dis- 

 position to build combs perpendicularly and bring them to build their 

 combs horizontally. With this accomplished we would have the perfec- 

 tion hive indeed — simply frames piled horizontally on the top of one 

 another with the ability to make its capacity suit the colony or the apiar- 

 ist by simply removing or adding frames without in any way affecting the 

 desirable qualities of the hive. If this should fail will some one give us 

 a hive composed of sections about three inches in depth which may 



