I907.J THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 255 



of moving supers. I have moved be drone and filled with drone eggs 

 supers in this way, double canvas 



over the whole thing, so the air will 

 circulate in them and keep cool. 



Worker Comb in tlie Brood Praiues 



Payer by Mr. W. L. Porter. 



To get the best results out of any 

 business it is necessary to have every- 

 thing pertaining to it in the best or- 

 der. We keep bees for their honey- 

 gathering ability. 



It is only the worker bees that 

 gather honey. The drones are not 

 only in the way but through the period 

 of their life they consume a large 

 amount of honey. It is only the work- 

 er cells that produce worker bees. 

 It can be readily seen then how im- 

 portant it is to have all or as near 

 all as possible worker combs in the 

 breeding part of the hive. 



It has been my experience in hana- 

 ling a great many bees that I have 

 bought and leased that quite a large 

 percent of the combs in the brood 

 chamber is drone and very often in 

 the brood season these are well filled 

 with a stock of drone bees in all 

 stages from egg up to the perfect 

 drone bees. It is hard to estimate 

 how much loss there is to the bee- 

 keeper, but it is quite an amount and 

 is in proportion to the amount of 

 drones produced in the hive. 



The way to prevent this loss is not 

 to have drone comb in the brood 

 frames, and in this way cause the 

 queen to produce nothing but worker 

 bees. There are two ways to prevent 

 this. 



The first is to have the bees build 

 worker combs. The second is, use 

 full sheets of foundation fastened in 

 so it will not stretch or sag. Many 

 consider it expensive to use full sheets 

 and do not have the ready money to 

 invest, and depend entirely on the 

 bees building the combs from starters. 

 It starters are used they should be as 

 narrow as possible. I use a strip four 

 cells wide. If a wider strip is used 

 the lower edge expands and causes 

 the comb to be fluted giving it a wavy 

 effect. After you have the starter 

 properly in then comes the task of 

 getting bees to build worker combs, 

 which is not always easy. If we put 

 the starters in a full hive and they 

 have a desire to swarm as is very 

 often the case, that whole comb will 



as fast as made. 



If we give the starters to a hive that 

 is strong and has no drawn combs 

 and the queen be old, soon to be re- 

 placed, the probability is one-half of 

 the comb will be drone. If the start- 

 ers are put in a hive when there is a 

 great rapid honey flow the bees, in 

 their hurry to get roon; for the honey, 

 will build what we call storage cells. 

 They are made large and irregular 

 and always produce drones if eggs are 

 laid in them. There are certain con- 

 ditions where they will build almost 

 perfect worker combs. If we have a 

 young vigorous queen with a medium 

 small cluster of bees, where the whole 

 desire of the hive is to build up and 

 get strong, then they want worker 

 bees and not drones and the hives 

 will build all worker combs for a 

 while, and these are the hives we 

 want to select to build our combs. 

 If we wish to use full drawn combs 

 for extracting or other purposes and 

 have frames on hand with starters 

 we can take out the full combs from 

 these_ hives and replace with starters 

 and in this way have worker combs 

 built. This will be true until the 

 medium swarms build up to the con- 

 dition where they are strong enough 

 to have the swarming desire then look 

 out for drone combs. By taking 

 these precautions we may get good 

 worker combs built from starters. On 

 the second point of getting worker 

 comb built on full sheets this insures 

 at all times perfect worker comb and 

 the bees helped along so they produce 

 the comb much quicker, and is a pay- 

 ing investment, and the combs are 



stronger and give satisfaction for 

 brood raising and extracting purposes. 

 If full sheets are used they must be 

 properly fastened in so the combs 

 can not stretch if they are suspended 

 by their own weight. The comb in 

 hot weather, will stretch at the top 

 of the comb and the cells will be ir- 

 regular in shape and the brood raised 

 in them will produce drones. I have 

 seen combs suspended in this way 

 where one-quarter of the comb was 

 useless to raise worker bees. The 

 most common way for bracing the 

 brood foundation is by stretching very 

 fine wire in the frame and then with 

 a little tracing wheel imbed the wire 

 into the foundation. This method to 

 me had proven unsatisfactory, the 



