1894. 



THE . I MEBIt '- 1 N BEE- KEEPER. 



59 



all appearances only honey being 

 gathered Tor the colonies which did 

 not swarm to live from day to day ; 

 vet these swarms, which were hived 

 in empty hives, except a starter one- 

 half inch deep in each frame, filled 

 their hives with comb and brood in 

 from fourteen to twenty days and 

 were prepared for the honey harvest 

 when it arrived, fully as well as were 

 the colonies which did not cast swarms. 

 The really wonderful part of it was, 

 that colonies which did not swarm, 

 and the colonies which cast swarms, 

 did not have two pounds of honey in 

 their hives at time of swarming, and 

 at the end of the twenty days there 

 was mi more honey in these old colo- 

 nies than there was at time of swarm- 

 ing, while the new swarms had filled 

 their hives with combs and brood, and 

 had nearly if not quite as much hon- 

 ey at the end of the twenty days as 

 did these old colonies. At this time 

 pollen was very abundant, and was 

 gathered apparently to the detriment 

 of the old colonies, for the brood was 

 actually crowded out by it, while, al- 

 though the new swarms seemed to 

 gather as much as the old, )et it was 

 all consumed from some cause, so that 

 instead of combs of pollen, as in the 

 one case, I had frames of new white 

 comb filled with brood, with scarcely 

 pollen enough in the combs to last the 

 brood twenty-four hours,, when a rainy 

 day occurred. 



At another time swarms thus hived 

 did not build combs at all, compara- 

 tively speaking, as, after being hived 

 a week, they did not have comb equal 

 in size to a mans hand, and not a cell 

 of honey in sight, while swarms given 

 empty combs would fill them with 

 brood, although little if any honey 



was stored. In this latter case pollen 

 was not plentiful. From the above I 

 conclude that there are times when 

 pollen can be converted into wax, and 

 used largely for comb building and 

 and brood rearing, but it needs close 

 observation on the part of the apiarist 

 to know when this can be depended 

 upon. When it can, such comb- cost 

 nothing and foundation is lost. As 

 friend Hutchinson has said to his 

 leader, I use small colonies largely for 

 comb building, and hive many of my 

 swarms on empty combs, which have 

 been previously built by these colo- 

 nies, for these small colonies or 

 nuclei will build comb to the best ad- 

 vantage, while they can do nothing 

 else as well. 



While my combs are generally built 

 by nuclei, yet 1 have had hundreds of 

 combs built on the plan given in 

 " The Production of Comb Honey," 

 and where I use full sheets of foun- 

 dation in the sections, or sections of 

 empty comb left over from the season 

 previous, I always believe it the most 

 profitable to use only starters in the 

 sections. In cases like the experi- 

 ments given in the first of this article, 

 the sections were not put on the hives 

 at all, for sections are of no use on a 

 hive except at times when the bees 

 are getting more honey that they con- 

 sume, while it is often a disadvantage 

 to have them on in times of scarcity, 

 for the bees will often gnaw the foun- 

 dations starters down and cover the 

 nice white sections with propolis. 

 When honey is coming in plentifully 

 the sections should always be on the 

 hive, and the matter of whether they 

 should be filled with foundation or not 

 depends on whether we use founda- 

 tion or empty combs below. If we 



