AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 273 



the sooner where these brace-combs were left than they did those where they had 

 been removed ; and, if I correctly remember, I so wrote in the American Bee Jour- 

 nal at the time, advising all to remove the brace or burr combs from the bottom of 

 the supers, but not from the frames. 



The next year I tried the same experiment again, and so on for several years, 

 until at last I became thoroughly convinced that these combs added largely to my 

 crop of comb honey by leading the bees into the sections much sooner than they 

 otherwise would go. 



Now, some may say that it is no use getting the bees into the sections as soon as 

 the first honey comes in ; but I claim that this has very much to do with our crop of 

 comb honey. It is not that the first three or four pounds of honey stored in the 

 sections could be sold for so much cash that I wish it placed in the sections, although 

 that might be quite an incentive where a person kept 500 colonies, the same 

 amounting to about a ton of honey in that case ; but all my past experience teaches 

 me that, for every pound of honey stored in the brood-nest at the commencement of 

 the season, or honey harvest, there will be five pounds less stored in the sections 

 that year. Let the bees once commence to store honey in the brood-nest thus early 

 in the season, and they are loth to enter the sections at all, and, instead of giving 

 us lots of section honey, they will keep crowding the queen from the brood-cells 

 more and more, storing them full of honey, until, when fall comes, we have little 

 honey for market, and our bees in poor shape for winter. 



Then, again, these thick top-bars, which are used to do away with these brace- 

 combs, place a barrier between the brood-combs below and the sections above, 

 instead of forming ladders to lead the bees to the sections. Who has not noticed 

 that where an inch or two of sealed honey intervened between the brood in the hive 

 and the tops of the frames, that the bees were much more loth to go into the sec- 

 tions immediately on the first appearance of honey from the fields, than they were 

 when the brood came up all along the top-bars to the frames ? This was one of the 

 claims for the contraction of brood-chambers in the interest of comb honey, that 

 where contraction was used the brood must come close to the bottoms of the sec- 

 tions, and, so coming, the bees were in the sections in a twinkling when the honey 

 harvest arrived. I doubt not but what all will be free to admit that an inch of 

 sealed comb honey would be a better leader to the sections than an inch of wood, as 

 is now proposed. When we come to fully understand this fact we shall see that, 

 wherein these brace-combs are the means of having our bees enter the section 

 sooner, just In that proportion are they of value to us. 



Try the experiment, brethren, and see if, at the end of such a trial, you will not 

 be willing to put up with the inconvenience they cause you, for the sake of their 

 great value. Borodino, N. Y. 



SOMH SUGGESTIONS FREEI^Y OFFERBD 



BY " BEN THERE." 



if I were a bee-keeper, what mighty things I'd do ! Yes, I would. Every 

 hive should be systematically placed, and all surroundings would conspire to a big 

 honey crop ! You thing not, eh? Well, let me outline my ideas, and if then you 

 say, from reasonable reflection, that I am " all off," I'm a tenderfoot if I ever peep 

 again ! 



1 would first make a map — yes, sir, that's what I said — a map, of my surround- 

 ings, and hang it up on the wall for reference. So far— say, 40 yards — from the 

 house, I'd place my bees, fronting east — a colony every six feet one way bv as 



