282 



THE AMERICAN APWULTURIST. 



INVERTIKG. 



Inverting brood-cluimbers seemed 

 to us from the first uuniitural juid 

 ol>jectiomil)le, and as we were able 

 to attain the desired end more read- 

 il}' other ways we have not prac- 

 tised it. Witli Langstrotli's frames, 

 uncapping- honej', spacing frames 

 close and crowding broodcliam- 

 bers were sufficient. Inverting 

 shallow hives is often of little use. 



In his pamphlet " How to Raise 

 Comb Honey" Mr. Foster says : 



''As we have observed, the main 

 object of inverting and transpos- 

 ing is to bring the brood as close as 

 possible to the surplus boxes. It 

 is obvious that none of these plans 

 accomplishes the object perfectly 

 since the honey very often reaches 

 from top to bottom of brood-cham- 

 ber at sides, while the brood does 

 the same in the middle. If we 

 were to adopt this principle we 

 would divide the brood-chamber 

 into shallow stories. Then, by sort- 

 ing the combs containing most 

 brood above, our object would be 

 nearest accomplished and there 

 would be no need of inverting." 



Interchanging is sufficient when 

 an upper story is nearly filled with 

 honey and nearly all the brood is 

 in the lower, but when brood is in 

 centre frames and honey in the 

 outer frames of both stories, in- 

 verting or interchanging will not 

 help matters? then it is very desir- 

 able that frames are readily mov- 

 able. 



I believe Mr. Heddon now places 

 little importance on the inverting 

 feature of his new hives. 



CASES OF BROOD ABOVK SUPERS. 



It has been proposed by several 

 to place a surplus case between 

 two cases of brood, the queen be- 

 ing confined to the lower one by 

 the zinc honey-board. I first heard 

 of this from B. Walker, Capac, 

 Mich. 



I hesitated to follow it, fearinir 



sections would be soiled ; that the 

 confined drones would die and that 

 as bees would feed larvae for a 

 time above sections, pollen would 

 be stored in them. Doctor Tinker 

 has given a point on getting rid of 

 the drones, and if it works nicel}'' 

 it will do away with one objection ; 

 and the other I overcame hy rais- 

 ing the case above the honey-board 

 and under the sections at first, 

 until the larvae were all sealed, 

 then it was placed at the top above 

 the sections. AVhen bees are 

 well at work in sections and be- 

 fore they are capped, this brood- 

 case is removed and is extracted ; 

 or, if it contains brood, it is placed 

 upon a weak colony. I do not 

 think this jjlan of arranging brood- 

 cases will be largely followed. 



We find one case of brood abov§ 

 the honey-board brings the bees 

 through it and then there is no bar- 

 rier between them and the sections ; 

 this case also catches the pollen 

 and keeps it out of the sections. 



PERFORATED ZINC. 



I do not feel ready to believe 

 that queen-excluding zinc is ab- 

 solutely no hindrance to the bees 

 and it is a question with me 

 whether it would not be better to 

 leave more room in brood-chamber 

 except with new swarms and use 

 slat hone^'-boards without the zinc. 

 I should get less pollen in sections 

 than with contraction and 2)robably 

 less honey in boxes and more to 

 extract but there might be a greater 

 crop with less labor and less risk of 

 insufficient stores at an^^ time of 

 the year. 



Mr. Cowan has discarded the 

 use of perforated zinc. If a colony 

 is contracted too much, pollen will 

 go into sections whatever the hive 

 used and I prefer to give more 

 room than less. With me new 

 swarms, hived on a few frames con- 

 taining startei's with drawn-out 

 combs in section above honey 



