92 THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



foundation, placing them near the center with two combs of brood 

 between them. A\"hen queens or combs are removed, all queen-cells 

 must be destroyed. Removing tw^o combs of sealed brood will just 

 as effectually retard swarming as the famous Jones plan of shaving 

 oft' the heads of the brood. 



I continue to work along this line till the end of the April flow, 

 Avhen I round up a bunch of hands and gather the honey. AMiile 

 the crew^ is at a yard gathering the honey I have them fill the empty 

 supers with full sheets of fottndation and return them to the hives 

 for the June flow. When we get over gathering the hone}' I lay 

 off the hands till I need them to help gather the June crop in July. 



The plan outlined here refers to hives with L. frames. 1 am 

 experimenting with the divisible brood-chamber, wdiich consists of 

 two supers. In reversing the brood with that stjde of hive, all that 

 is necessary is to lift both supers off the bottom-board, set the top 

 one back on the stand and put the other on top. I am unable to 

 say yet whether that is better or not as I am always fearful of 

 overlooking queen-cells if I do not go over each frame carefully. 

 I shall have to give it further experiment before I adopt it. 



Upon reading over what I have written, I- wish to add that 

 when the queen is removed the ripe queen-cell may be introduced 

 at once by placing it in a cell protector. Otherwise the bees are 

 liable to destroy it if introduced in less than twent3^-four hours. 



While I invented this system myself, I must give credit to Mr. 

 G. M. Doolittle, Dr. C. C. Miller and 'Mv. Stachelhausen for ideas 

 that led up to the plan. 



Have We Not Been Breeding Too Much for Color 

 and Too Little for Honey? 



ADDING STRIPES TO THE ITALIAN BEE— BEAUTIFUL BEES NOT 



ALWAYS GOOD PRODUCERS— AN EXPERIENCE IN 1877— 



"HEN, LET'S SHAKE HANDS." 



By H, L. JEFFREY, Woodbury, Connecticut. 



[This is the second of the series of articles by Mr. Jeffrej- on the breeding 

 question.] 



'^^\ S Dr. Bonney writes, "there has been no improvement in the 



-^A^ honey bee." \\>11, that's true as a whole, but first let's see 



what can the doctor mean by improvement? 



]\Iany people will assert that to change in some way the loca- 

 tion, the looks, the color, the size, the shape or the quality, is an 

 improvement. Someone has somewhere or time said, we or they 

 have added one or two more stripes to the Italian bee. Is it to the 

 Italian bee, or is it to a conglomerated hybrid of very doubtful or- 

 igin? To improve, the thing should be made better. 



I have been watching the bees a large part of the time since 

 1868, and a little for vears before that, in the days of the old box 



