June 1. 1911 



337 



hive, it is remove:! inul the colony in the 

 ui)i:er hive is given a bottom-board and the 

 work is done. If founchition is used instead 

 of drawn combs, a frame of unsealed brood 

 should be placed in the center of the new 

 hive to entice the (jueen above. The combs 

 in the old hive may now be set out and the 

 honey "robVied out." so that they can Vie 

 rendered for wax. A beginner might won- 

 iler why it would not be Ijetter to use empty 

 frames instead of foundation, as they would 

 be cheaper: Init these bees are not in comli- 

 tion to Ijuiljl good combs, hence combs with 

 4^ to 4 cells to the inch (drone size) would 

 be built, wliich must not l)e tolerated. The 

 colony would likely be worth more in the 

 old hive than to lie transferred by this jilan 

 without either drawn combs or full sheets of 

 wired foundation; for the combs in the un- 

 desirable hive were likely built by the bees 

 of a new swarm that were in condition to 

 build a large per cent of worker combs. 



In detail the plan is as follows: In Fig. 1, 

 No. 1. a hive is shown with cover removed. 

 This hive, as will be seen, was tilled just as 

 full of biood-frames as it would hold before 

 the swarm was hived. There was. by actual 

 counting, just three short spaces between 

 the top-bars of the frames, where bees could 

 jiass uj) above. This was not as much ojien- 

 ing as we desired, for we knew that the queen 



would never pass u]) through such small 

 ()l)enings and take iiossession above. We 

 inverted the hive as shown in Xo. 2, and 

 found just what we wanted — i. e.. wide si)ac- 

 ing. The party who made the brood-frames 

 used more narrow material for his bottom- 

 bars than for the top-bars, and conse(iuently 

 at the bottom there were i)lenty of o])en 

 s})aces for the l)ees and queen to pass al)ove 

 tlnough. Box hives, or hives with immo\- 

 able covers, are inverted ami transferred in 

 the same way. 



The l)rood-nest of combs that we wanted 

 to transfer these bees into was now set upon 

 this inverted hive, and in a week we found 

 that the (pieen had taken jiossession above. 

 We tried three ])lans to get the(|ueen aV)ove 

 the excluder, in dilferent colonies. During 

 the middle of warm days the (pieen is most 

 likely to be exi)anding the brood-nest, and 

 is then more ai)t to go above. We found 

 that, if we began looking for the (jueen while 

 the new hive was still over the old one, the 

 i[ueen would gel frightened and run down 

 below: so now we quietly lift the u])per otf. 

 as in Xo. 4. and set it on an empty l)ody 

 while we are looking for the (jueen. The 

 second ])lan was to lift otT the U])i)er body 

 quietly, as Ijefore; but instead of looking for 

 the ({ueen, we i)lace an excluder on the hive 

 as in Xo. 5, then set the body back on as in 



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FIG. 



TOWXSKXD CONSTDKRS A WHEELBAKROW THE 

 FOR CONVEYING HIVES AND COMB«. 



MOST PRK'TK'AE INIICANS 



