26 BEES. 
same effect as a light honey flow does and the results are good. 
Others prefer to give the bees such a large supply of stores in the fall 
that when spring comes they will have an abundance for brood rear- 
ing, and it will not be necessary to disturb them in cool weather. 
Both ideas are good, but judicious stimulative feeding usually more - 
than pays for the labor. Colonies should be fed late in the day, so 
that the bees will not fly as a result of it, and so that robbing will not 
be started. When the weather is warmer and more settled, the brood 
cluster may be artificially enlarged by spreading the frames so as to 
insert an empty comb in the middle. The bees will attempt to cover 
all the brood that they already had, and the queen will at once begin 
laying in the newly inserted comb, thus making a great increase in 
the brood. This practice is desirable when carefully done, but may 
lead to serious results if too much new brood is produced. A beginner 
had better leave the quantity of brood to the bees. 
It is desirable early in the season, before any preparations are made 
for swarming, to go through the apiary and clip one wing of each 
queen so that if a swarm issues the queen can not fly and the bees 
can be easily returned to the old stand. This should be done before 
the hive becomes too populous. It is perhaps best to clip queens as 
they are introduced, but some colonies may rear new ones without 
the knowledge of the owner, and a spring examination will insure no 
escaping swarms. 
Queens sometimes die during the winter and early spring, and since 
there is no brood from which the bees can replace them, the queenless 
colonies are ‘‘hopelessly queenless.’’ Such colonies are usually rest- 
less and are not active in pollen gathering. If, on opening a colony, 
it is found to be without a queen and reduced in numbers, it should 
be united with another colony by smoking both vigorously and caging 
the queen in the queen-right colony for a day or two to prevent her 
being killed. A frame or two of brood may be added to a queenless 
colony, not only to increase its strength, but to provide young brood 
from which they can rear a queen. Bee keepers in the North can 
frequently buy queens from southern breeders early in the spring, and 
naturally this is better than leaving the colony without a queen until 
the bees can rear one, as it is important that there be no stoppage in 
brood rearing at this season. 
SWARM MANAGEMENT AND INCREASE. 
The excessive rearing of brood at the wrong season or increase 
in the number of colonies greatly reduces the surplus honey crop by 
consumption. The ideal to which all progressive bee keepers work, 
when operating simply for honey, is to stimulate brood rearing to 
prepare bees for gathering, to retard breeding when it is less desir- 
able, and to prevent swarming. Formerly the measure of success 
397 
