76 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER, 



May 



It is the only way that I have ever 

 been able to get all combs builtstraight 

 without using full sheets of founda- 

 tion. When I had my combs built 

 from starters, the time and trouble in 

 cutting out drone comb was worth a 

 great deal more than the cost of comb 

 foundation, in full sheets for brood 

 frames. We may well consider the 

 qnestion of hiving our swarms on full 

 sheets of foundation. Perfect brood 

 combs we must have. To produce a 

 first-class article of comb honey and 

 get nice smooth combs evenly capped 

 over, is one of the bread and butter 

 points in honey production. With 

 me full sheets of foundation are worth 

 as much for mv sections as they are 

 for brood frames. I have several times 

 set aside an equal number of hives, and 

 furnished one-half with starters and 

 the other with full sheets, and in 

 every case I have got more than 

 enough to pay for the extra founda- 

 tion. The bees go to work more 

 readily on full seeets of foundation 

 than they will on starters. I have time 

 and again put sections without found- 

 ation in them in the center of a cap 

 filled with foundation, and have left 

 them od from the beginning of the 

 honey harvest until the close, tiering 

 up three high, and forty out of 150 

 is the most I have ever had complet- 

 ed. 



There has been great difference of 

 honest opinion among bee keepers 

 about the value of drawn combs in the 

 sections at the beginning of the honey 

 harvest, but the principal reason why 

 many do not see this question in its 

 proper light is that they do not com- 

 pare the sections of drawn comb with 

 those filled with fresh foundation. I 



have known for years that freshly- 

 made foundation is better than that 

 which has been made for some time 

 and exposed to the air. In the fall of 

 1892 I had a lot of sections contain- 

 ing full sheets of foundation un- 

 touched by the bees, and last summer 

 when 1 commenced putting on supers 

 I took two to three rows of the old 

 sections, each of a number of supers, 

 and placed them with the new ones 

 containing fresh foundation. Only a 

 moderate amount of honey was being 

 gathared, and but a few colonies were 

 making any progress in the supers, 

 so that I was surprised a week or ten 

 days later to find most of those new sec- 

 tions built out and finished, while in 

 some cases the old foundation right 

 alongside in the same supers had not 

 been touched. Besides, by using foun- 

 dation in full sheets, separators are 

 not needed, and the untidy looking 

 drone comb is avoided, and in its 

 place we have nice, smooth work 

 comb and an evenly capped surface of 

 comb beautiful to behold. — E. W. 

 Moore in Prog. Bee-Keeper . (Incl.) 



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