THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 319 



will leave worker comb and go down into the corners and find a 

 drone cell in which to lay. If she does this when a colony is not 

 crowded, it :s an ind'cation that she is a poor or failing; qneen. Old 

 queens, which are slippery and shiny in appearance, should be re- 

 placed. 



"In the spring we go over the colonies and mark on the back of 

 the hive that the queen was clipped at a certain date. Where we 

 have a fall flow, particularly from buckwheat or flowers of one kind, 

 that queen has done her duty and should be replaced each year. 

 Incidentally we watch the disposition of the bees. If the bees are 

 cross or troublesome in any way, then the queen should be replaced. 

 I want a queen I can control. As I was saying, we are watching 

 the condition of the queen during the honey flow, and in a hive 

 where the queen is not doing well, I take her out and kill her, re- 

 placing her with a young queen. At the end of the season in the 

 fall, there are still colonies not requeened. We watch out for this 

 so that when the bees come to winter quarters they may have young, 

 vigorous queens, plenty of young- workers, and plenty of good stores. 

 They must have good protection for winter, with warm absorbent 

 packing, good ^•entilation, and their stores well sealed. When they 

 come out in the spring they are well looked after and in good shape 

 for the honey flow. 



"In the southern part of Ontario we winter out of doors almost 

 entirely. In the eastern part there seems to be a definite line where 

 bees are wintered out of doors, or in the cellar. In Guelph we win- 

 ter out of doors because we find it more convenient. We pack four 

 hives in a box and make the box tip enough so that supers can be 

 placed on the hives. We find a great many of our colonies, win- 

 tered out, will need extracting supers in fruit bloom. In the spring 

 we dig into the packing, usually of planer shavings, and look in 

 occasionally, and as soon as we find there is room, either place an 

 extracting super on the ten frame Langstrath hive, which consists 

 of brood combs and no queen excluder, thus allowing the queen to 

 pass freely into the combs; or if we wish to be very careful, we will 

 lift out the combs and bees from below into an extra hive body, 

 putting the empty combs in the bottom, and then place the hive 

 body back on top. If there is considerable worker brood, perhaps 

 some above and even some brood started in the chamber below, then 

 your colony is in good condition for taking off the increase. You 

 will find the old brood all capped, on which are built perhaps some 

 hatching queen cells. If you wish increase, this is cut ofT, and can 

 be divided into a number of nuclei. 



"When it comes to taking off the honey, I may say that I 

 have been using the eight-frame Root power extractor for several 

 seasons in some large apiaries in which I have an interest, and I 



