ception of eggs, honey or pollen, sup- 

 plying the larva' with food, etc. The 

 brooding is carried on with more energy 

 after the first lot of young bees are 

 hatched. No colony is in a prosperous 

 condition without the necessary quan- 

 tity of young bees. Here many begin- 

 ners miss it when making artificial 

 swarms. 



In this part of the country, where 

 white clover is almost our only resource 

 for honey, it is of the greatest import- 

 ance that our colonies should be strong 

 early. Bees require heat for brood-rear- 

 ing and comb-building, and we can pro- 

 mote breeding very much by contracting 

 the space in their hives according to 

 the size of each colony, by means of 

 division boards. Give them just as 

 many combs as the bees can well cover, 

 and the result will be sheets full of 

 brood from top to bottom and from end 

 to end. Without this precaution, we 

 have about half as much brood or less, 

 in as manner combs. Division boards 

 should not touch the botiom by from )i 

 to % inch so as to give the bees access 

 to combs of honey placed on the other 

 side. An empty comb is to be added 

 from time to time as the growth of the 

 colony requires. The proper use of 

 division boards in early spring is such a 

 stimulus to breeding up, that perhaps 

 none of us would do without them who 

 give it once a fair trial. 



When we have a number of colonies 

 which are all treated alike, we find, in 

 spring, always some much stronger than 

 the balance, while other colonies are 

 rather slow in increasing their popula- 

 tion. If their queen is too old, or un- 

 prolific for some reason, she should be 

 replaced by a better one. But it hap- 

 pens, sometimes, that no good reason 

 can be assigned for the slow progress of 

 such colonies and we are often surprised 

 at their energy and rapid growth as soon 

 as a few combs with hatching brood and 

 adhering bees from a strong hive are 

 added to them. 



The proverb of old, " Make your 

 swarms early," is, therefore, not my 

 motto. But I strengthen up my weak 

 colonies with combs of hatching brood 

 and adhering bees from strong colonies 

 in order to be ready for the honey har- 

 vest. As old bees only are foragers, it 

 requires a large number of them at the 

 time when flowers are yielding the nec- 

 tar, to insure a full crop of honey ; con- 

 sequently, we should secure our honey- 

 harvest first, and then make our swarms. 



As a rule, bees will not swarm when 

 the queen has plenty of room to deposit 

 eggs, nor the bees to deposit honey. 

 Without one or both of these require- 

 ments, a swarm may issue on any tine 



day. A queen, however, may be 

 crowded in the course of a day. and we 

 must prepare for an occassional excep- 

 tion to the above rule. 



I use the Langstroth hive with 10 

 frames in the brood chamber, giving a 

 capacity of about 1,320 square inches of 

 comb. My greatest care in spring is to 

 have these 10 frames filled with brood 

 by the time that white clover com- 

 mences to bloom, and I do not put on 

 the second story or honey chamber un- 

 til that object is accomplished. A comb 

 tilled with too much honey in propor- 

 tion to the brood is exchanged for an 

 empty one, and placed in the upper 

 story of some hive, or used to build up 

 a weak colony or a nucleus. The empty 

 comb is placed next to the one on which 

 I find the queen, who will not be long 

 in finding it. When 10 Langstroth 

 frames are filled with brood and the 

 honey-chamber is put on the hive, at 

 least partly filled with empty combs, 

 bees will follow at once their natural in- 

 clination of storing above their brood, 

 providing the flowers are secreting 

 honey and weather permit. We should 

 always make it a point of having at 

 least one full comb in the honey-cham- 

 ber reaching down to the brood, serving 

 the bees as a ladder to run up on. This 

 is an inducement for them to enter 

 more readily. 



There are now so many young bees 

 hatching every day that the queen is 

 kept busy refilling with eggs those 

 vacated cells. Under these circum- 

 stances she will hardly ever enter the 

 honey-chamber. If honey combs are 

 emptied promptly with the" extractor, or 

 the necessary room is given them to 

 build comb honey we shall have but few 

 natural swarms. I am producing princi- 

 pally extracted honey, but it is due to 

 the above management that I have had 

 but one natural swarm during the last 

 1 "> years or more. 



While our colonies are all very strong 

 and bees busily engaged collecting 

 honey, we may quietly prepare for the 

 increase of our apiary. 



Worker- bees are females imperfectly 

 developed, and a perfect female or queen 

 can he developed from a worker-egg. 

 Accordingly, the bees select their cells, 

 make them larger and longer, and sup- 

 ply them with the necessary food, so- 

 called royal-jelly— a mixture of pollen 

 and honey. In due time the cells are 

 capped over. 



The hive containing our choicest 

 queen may be deprived of the same. 

 The restless motion of the bees about 

 their hive soon afterwards tell an ex- 

 perienced eye that they are missing 

 their queen". In less than 24 hours, 



