The Canadian Horticulturist. 65 



foundation. The object of the sheets or combs is to assist in preventing pollen 

 from being carried in the sections. Localities in which pollen is not troublesome 

 the bees should be hived on starters, and after allowing one complete day to pass 

 after time of hiving, put supers on the hive. I have not much faith in added 

 energy through swarming, but the bees have at the commencement no brood to 

 care for and feed, and they give better results as to surplus. If sections on 

 some old stock are about ready, it is a good plan to give these to swarms to 

 finish. They will make very rapid work in finishing them. Now, as to the 

 combs which will be built from the starters, we know when a young queen is in 

 the hive the bees will be less inclined to build drone comb, but is this condition 

 practicable for a comb honey producer ? I think not. The plan of re-queening 

 with young queens before the honey flow is not desirable, from the loss of time 

 resulting from introduction of new queen and taking out of the old one. The 

 truly successful comb honey producer, must be ever on the watch to improve 

 his stock, in this direction, he should know by numbers what supers have been 

 finished by every colony, and when he notices section supers, with well capped 

 comb and free from brace comb and propolis (this latter characteristic 

 should be especially observed), he should note that hive, especially if the amount 

 of honey secured has been large. Next season he should breed from such a 

 queen, and so on, producing from year to year a better strain of bees. I am not 

 saying a word against queen breeders. I am a queen breeder myself, but a 

 comb honey producer should have a strain of bees which, although they may 

 not be the best in the world, yet must be of sufificient value to him to cause him 

 to replace them with extreme caution and only with something tried by himself. 

 To prevent deterioration some new blood must be introduced each season ; it is 

 then impractical to have young queens with swarms, and often with such queens 

 there will be an undesirable amount of drone comb. I have within the last two 

 weeks seen the result of an extensive experiment conducted by S. T. Pettit, of 

 Belmont, Ontario, under the following directions : 



The swarms were given one or two combs entirely drone, the balance 

 starters, with the hope that the bees would be furnished with worker comb, but 

 they appear to have no power of reasoning and in every instance appear to build 

 as much drone comb as if the first combs had not been given. For extracted 

 honey, I favor full sheets of foundation every time, but for comb honey my 

 arguments for starters, unless in exceptional cases, are these : We are trying to 

 get the most honey out of these bees and we want the best product, if we do not 

 care for much increase, we can shake the bees from these combs after the 

 season is over and destroy them. If we wish to winter them we can put them 

 on good combs and feed them on sugar syrup for winter stores. The combs 

 built by the bees can be patched up to the best advantage, the old hive placed 

 directly behind. The old stand can be treated thus : shake almost six days 

 after swarming a good many bees from the comb adding them to the new 

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