658 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



is that I want all my white clover honey in my sections, and when 

 these combs are taken out with the sections later in the season, they 

 are set aside to use for feeding back in the fall or the coming spring. 



Returning to this extracting super, I select two full frames of honey 

 and place them on one side of the empty super on the bottom board, 

 which will now become the lower half of a divisible brood chamber. 



I then remove all the frames containing brood and place them next 

 to these frames of honey. 



There will probably be some empty frames, and frames with honey, 

 still in the super on this colony. 



If so, I use a bee escape between the two supers, put on the coveir 

 and proceed to the next colony, which I treat in the same manner, 

 and so on till this divisible hive is full of brood and honey which will 

 then contain twelve five inch frames with more or less brood in each 

 frame and bees enough to look after this brood. Eight full frames 

 of honey, and a young queen. 



Now, I forgot to state that before I put any brood in this hive I 

 take one of the queens I ordered from the south, to be delivered the 

 first week in June, remove the cork and with the small blade of my 

 knife remove most of the candy, leaving only enough to confine the 

 queen, three or four hours, and lay the cage on tihe bottom board near 

 the entrance. 



These artificial swarms are then set aside in the shade until towards 

 evening, when I remove them to some out apiary, or if workiag at an 

 out apiary I bring them to the home apiary, open the entrance and 

 by morning they will be able to take care of themselves. 



From forty colonies in my ihome apiary last spring, I made twelve 

 in this manner which produced twenty-three cases of comb honey, a 

 little less than two cases each during the season. 



I consider the taking of this brood from my strong colonies at the 

 time of putting on the comb supers a benefit foir it has a tendency to 

 discourage sv/arming. ' 



In about a week or as soon as the brood begins to hatch in these 

 artificial swarms I put a comib super on each one the same as the first 

 super used on the other colonies, and when my stock of laying queens 

 is exhausted I use sealed queen cells from some colony that has cast 

 a swarm. 



I have entered into details in regard to these artificial swarms in 

 order to show you how I convert the low grade dandelion honey gath- 

 ered in Maj' into bees, and get a fair crop of honey from them the 

 same season. 



From this time until the close of the season I pursue the same 

 methods as are generally used in the production of a crop of comb 

 honey. 



At tIhe close of the season I sort my comb supers and group to- 

 gether all unfinished sections that are more than half filled, return- 

 ing them to my best colonies and feed till finished. 



This year I had 280 such sections wliich I ])laced on three of my 

 strong colonies and fed sixty pounds of extracted honey. 



They were all nicely finished in seven days. 



