ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPKRS' ASSOCIATION. 63 



So in practice, if we are careful not to have drone comb in the 

 upper story, with our large brood chambers and shallow supers, we 

 rarely have any brood above. 



There may be something in the location, I do not want to say that 

 there is not, there may be some other reason, but we have had the same 

 trouble with the ten-frame Langstroth hives that you people have 

 had and I think the fact that the hive is too small explains why the 

 queens went up. 



When you use 8-frame Langstroth hives it is worse. The queens 

 will go up into the next story and' the bees will put some honey below 

 and the queen will keep on going up as long as there are empty cells. 

 We like the queens to remain in one brood chamber and we can get 

 them to do so if we give them a brood chamber that has sufficient 

 capacity. I have argued that time and again. I think last year we 

 were arguing the large hive question. That is my hobby. 



I want you to convince me if I am wrong, give me the reasons 

 why, for instance, in an apiary of 120 colonies every colony that has 

 a prolific queen in a Langstroth hive, the queen goes into the super, 

 when they do not in the Dadant hive. I can explain it in only one 

 way, that is, the queen had enough room in the large hive and not 

 enough in the small. 



Mr. Pettit. — One other point in Mr. Dadant's management that 

 I thought he was going to mention but did not, and I have often thought 

 it had a bearing on the question. Mr. Dadant, I understand, uses an 

 extracting frame that is not quite so deep as the brood chamber frame. 



Mr. Dadant. — That is true. 



Mr. Pettit. — ^And I was wondering if he stacked up half a dozen 

 Dadant brood chambers all the same depth, if the queen was more 

 apt to go up there. 



We have found a tendency of the queen not to go into shallow 

 supers if they could go into deeper ones. We have also found queens 

 going up when they still had plenty of room below, with the Lang- 

 stroth brood chamber. 



That matter of the bees holding their drone combs empty when 

 the queen wishes to have some drone combs to lay in, we have often 

 noticed that, and I have considered that one serious objection to using 

 drone combs in extracting supers, sometimes they will have all the 

 supers empty. Probably it is the fault of the queen, the queen should 

 be changed in that case, but those conditions occur. 



Question. — Will a strong colony with a queen below and queen 

 cells above swarm? 



The President. — This is a question for queen raisers. 



Mr. Kildow. — Some times. 



Mr. Hbinzel. — I believe they will some times, but I believe you 

 can reduce the tendency by putting on two supers and putting a queen 

 cell in the upper story. 



As a rule, are golden Italian bees crosser than three-banded? 



The President. — I will ask our State inspector to answer that 

 question. He ought to know. 



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