140 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER, 



September 



BRACE-COMBS, AND THEIR ADVANTAGES. 



It has been with much interest that 

 I have read all that has been said pro 

 and con by way of arguments, experi- 

 ence, desires, wishes, etc., along the 

 line of wide and thick top-bars for the 

 frames, to do away with brace and 

 burr-combs, all, or nearly all, seeming 

 to think that it would be a great ad- 

 vantage to "be rid of such a nuis- 

 ance," or, at least, most who have writ- 

 ten on this subject seem to think that 

 these little bits of combs between the 

 top-bars to the frames, and those be- 

 tween the top bars and the sections, 

 cannot be anything else than a nuis- 

 ance. I admit that they are often an 

 annoyance in the manipulation of the 

 hive, but instead of considering them 

 nuisance, I consider these same bits 

 of comb a great help, and for years I 

 have allowed them to remain on the 

 top-bars of my frames, just because I 

 considered them of more value than 

 they are an annoyance or disadvant- 

 age. AVere I working an apiary for 

 extracted honey, I might change my 

 mind a little, perhaps, but for comb 

 honey I would not allow anyone to 

 scrape them off my frames, or substi- 

 tute thick top- bars in their places for 

 50 cents per hive. 



Years ago, I thought of them as 

 most people do to-day, considering 

 them a nuisance, and not knowing of 

 the thick top-bar project at that time, 

 I scraped them off in the fall when I 

 prepared my bees tor winter; thus do- 

 ing away with them until the next 

 season, when the sections were on a- 

 gain, and the bees built them in dur- 

 ing the surplus flow of honey. This 

 I did until one fall, through an extra 

 amount of other work, I did not get 



time to go over more than about two- 

 thirds of the apiary in preparing for 

 winter, guessing at the rest, or what 

 amounted to the same thing, weighing 

 the hives to come at the amount of 

 stores they had, instead of inspecting 

 every faame, as I usually do, so that 

 I may know for certain just what each 

 hive contains. Previous to this I had 

 used the Hill device, or something sim- 

 ilar, to give the bees a passage-way 

 over the combs during the winter, as 

 is so often recommended to be used 

 under the bee-quilt; but frequent ex- 

 aminations during the winter satisfied 

 me that these brace-combs, which I 

 had heretofore taken so much paius to 

 remove, answered every purpose of 

 such a device, besides being much 

 cheaper, as well as requiring no room 

 in my shop, or lugging back and forth 

 from shop to apiary both spring and 

 fall, which they required when used ; 

 while with these brace-combs the fra- 

 mes were never misplaced in putting 

 in and out of the cellar, as was some 

 times the case where I had taken all 

 off as above given. 



But their greatest advantage app- 

 eared when I came to put on the sec- 

 tions, for the bees seemed to consider 

 them as little ladders on which to climb 

 up into the sections, for it was a very 

 noticeable fact that the bees entered 

 the sections much the sooner where 

 these brace-combs were left than they 

 did those where they had been remov- 

 ed ; and, if I correctly remember I so 

 wrote in the American Bee Journal 

 at the time, advising all to remove the 

 brace or burr-combs from the bottom 

 of the supers, but not from the frames. 



The next year I tried the same ex- 

 periment again, and so on for several 



