318 THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



Root was going" to speak on this subject this afternoon. However, 

 I think, as our conditions in Ontario, — as I speak particularly of the 

 Province of Ontario — are somewhat different from yours, that the 

 ground which I shall cover will not interfere with what Mr. Root 

 will take up. 



''I might say that first of all, we are extracted honey producers. 

 We have a few comb honey producers, but unfortunately the con- 

 sumers are paying so much more for extracted honey that we pro- 

 duce little comb honey. Our most extensive bee-keepers, keeping 

 from one to five and six, and even seven and eight hundred colonies, 

 are producing solely the extracted product. The extensive comb 

 honey producers could be named on the fingers of one hand. 



''The production of extracted honey depends on the whole sea- 

 son ; there is no point in the season where one can logically tell 

 when to begin to produce extracted honey. I suppose the most log- 

 ical time would be at the end of the honey flow, at which time we 

 are going to consider the conditions of our colonies tlie past year. 



"At the latter part of the honey flow we have to take into ac- 

 count the queen condition. We consider this of first importance in 

 extracted honey production. The colony of course depends almost 

 entirely on the queen. Some of our most successful producers of 

 extracted honey are right in territories that have been swept over 

 with European foul brood ; but the few men who have weathered 

 the storm have built up an extracted honey business that they had 

 not dreamed of after having been hit by European foul brood and 

 almost swept off the map. The first requisite in controlling Euro- 

 pean foul brood is good queens of good stock, and incidentally 

 securing the means of overcoming European foul brood. However, 

 I am not going to start a discussion of European foul brood, because 

 we have that this afternoon ; but merely the importance of queens. 



"In our swarm control, manv of our most extensive producers 

 svstematically go over their colonies every week or ten days, per- 

 haps not spending much time on a brood chamber, but enough to 

 see the condition in that chamber; and this weekly or periodically 

 going over the brood chamber does mean the control of swarming. 

 It controls the queen condition. Now there are a number of points 

 which must be observed in watching the work of a queen. 



''The first indication of a failing queen is the irregular appear- 

 ance of the brood; the second is two or more eggs in a cell. Of 

 course we know the appearance of the work of fertile workers. 

 Sometimes a queen will place two or more eggs in a cell. I have 

 in the earlv spring seen a vigorous queen do this very thing because 

 she had more eggs than she knew what to do with, but when the 

 summer comes I would not expect a good queen to place more than 

 one egg in a cell in a normally working colony. Also, a poor queen 



