1907 



GLEAM \^GS IN BEE CULTURE. 



691 



THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING ALL BROOD- 

 COMBS FILLED WITH BROOD AT THE 

 BEGINNING OF THE HARVEST. 



' ' How are the bees prospering, Mr. Smith ? ' ' 



"Seem to be doing fairly well, Mr. Doo- 

 little. Some of my hives have frames in 

 them which are already nearly solid with 

 brood." 



"You mean that now and then a colony 

 has one or two frames near the center of the 

 brood-nest in which the brood comes out 

 neaily to the bars of the frames where the 

 brood is the furthest extended near these 

 bars." 



' ' Yes, I guess that would express it better. 

 I find that the queen lays her eggs somewhat 

 on a circular plan rather than in the square 

 form of the frame, and the eggs the furthest 

 out on this circle of brood in each frame 

 comes very near, or so that the cells contain- 

 ing them touch the wood of the end- bars and 

 the top and bottom bars of one or two frames 

 in some of my best colonies. Is that good for 

 the fore part of May?" 



" Very good indeed." 



••I thought it good; and if I can have the 

 whole number of frames in the hives, on all 

 but two or three, filled as some of these are 

 when the honey harvest commences, I think 

 I shall secure a good yield of comb honey." 



' ' Aren't you a little modest in your wishes V ' ' 



"I did not think so. This is about as good 

 as I ever have frames filled with brood at the 

 beginning of the honey-tiow. Can you do 

 belter?" 



"I try to. I fear your hives may be too 

 large if you do not get your combs nearer 

 full of brood at the beginning of the honey 

 harvest from white clover about the middle 

 of June." 



' ' Perhaps you may be right, for a success- 

 ful bee-keeper told me at our last New York 

 convention that he reduced the size of his 

 hives a few years ago, after which it was no 

 uncommon thing to have the combs in his 

 hives with the brood touching the bars on all 

 edges of the combs." 



"In this that bee-keeper gave you one of 

 the greatest reasons for his success, although 

 he might not have known that he was doing 

 so." 



"Perhaps not; for his main claim for his 

 success was that the hive which he used was 

 a good one." 



"Just so. And I claim that the main rea- 

 son for its being a good hive, and the main 

 reason for his success with that hive, is and 

 was because he could thus secure the brood 

 in the frames. Few seem to realize that, un- 

 less the hive is so filled with brood at the 



commencement of the honey harvest that it 

 comes out to the frame-bars in the most of 

 the combs, there is not so good an assurance 

 of a good crop of section honey, no matter 

 how profusely the flowers may bloom, nor 

 how abundant the secretion of nectar in those 

 flowers." 



"I can hardly understand that. Please 

 explain." 



"With plenty of unoccupied comb in any 

 hive at the commencement of the honey har- 

 vest, goes the assurance of plenty of honey 

 in the sections; for plenty of honey in the 

 sections, and much unoccupied comb in the 

 brood-chamber to the same hive, do not go 

 together." 



"Why not?" 



"Because, to give the best results the combs 

 remaining in the brood-chamber at the com- 

 mencement of the honey harvest must be lit- 

 erally filled with brood, otherwise the bees 

 will commence storing their first honey in the 

 empty combs in the brood-chamber instead of 

 the sections, then keep ci'owding down the 

 queen till, at the end of the season, we shall 

 have little honey in the sections, with few 

 bees in the hive for winter. But with the 

 combs full of brood, the first storing is done 

 in the sections, and, having commenced work 

 herein, the bees continue (not thinking of 

 crowding out the queen at all), with little 

 honey being put in the brood-chamber till 

 near the close of the season, when the queen 

 slacks in brooding of her own accord." 



' ' But with me I have only the corners of 

 the frames without brood, and perhaps two- 

 thirds of the two or three outside combs, at 

 the commencement of the harvest, and 1 

 had always supposed this was very good in- 

 deed." 



"This is not so bad as more empty comb 

 would be, but it is proportionately bad, and 

 tends toward a decreased yield of section 

 honey. If you had 100 colonies of b-^es, and 

 this state of affairs detracted 10 pounds from 

 the yield of each colony on an average, your 

 loss for just one season would be 1000 pounds 

 of honey. And this would not be for one year 

 only, but for every year you continue so to 

 use your hives. And as you would probably 

 do nearly as much work, taking the whole 

 season together, with your bees losing this 

 1000 pounds, as you would to secure it, it 

 would amount to quite an item to you in the 

 course of 25 years. ' ' 



"Well, how can I remedy the matter with- 

 out procuring all new hives?" 



" This is the way I do: I get, out of inch 

 lumber, enough boards of tne same size of 

 my frames so that I can have an average of 

 two of these to each hive I have colonies of 

 bees in. To these boards are nailed top-bars 

 to my frames, so that each board can be hung 

 in the hive the same as a frame can, and 

 which will take the place of any frame I wish 

 to remove at any time. These boards I usu- 

 ally call dummies, though they are often called 

 division-boards. At the commencement of 

 the honey harvest I look over every hive 

 having bees in them and set apart all colonies 

 which seem strong enough to work in sec- 



