38 MONTANA EXPERIMENT STATION 



the bees. It will be remembered that, under natural conditions, 

 the brood is centrally located, and to the front with scattering, cells 

 cf pollen above and to the rear, followed by honey. The outside 

 combs are nearly always given up to pollen in large quantities and 

 to honey. In shifting combs in a colony care should be taken not 

 to insert combs of this character from the outside into the middle of 

 the brood nest, as this only divides the latter, and the bees will 

 not move the pollen or sealed honey, even to $ive place for the 

 queen to lay. The honey may be gotten rid of by first extracting, 

 but the pollen still remains. Such combs of necessity must be kept 

 for outside combs. Drone combs are also undesirable in the brood 

 nest as they lead to the production of a large and super-abundant 

 number of these fellows, which, not only take a great deal of the 

 strength of the colony, in the shape of care during their development, 

 but, after being matured, are only so many extra and useless idlers 

 to feed. In actual practice we try to expunge all drone combs from 

 the brooder chamber. In any event, a patch of drone combs half 

 as big as one's hand placed near the outside of the brood chamber 

 will insure the rearing of all the drones necessary to fertilize virgin 

 queens, for it must be kept in mind that a queen mates but once for 

 life. It is also desirable to have only smooth, even combs, so that 

 large patches of brood will be reared, for in broken combs the 

 brood is patchy and much space is lost. Drone combs and uneven 

 broken combs may, therefore, be gradually culled out and relegated 

 to the top story and used for extracted honey. In removing such 

 combs it is often hard to know just what to do with them, as they 

 may have brood in them. If they be removed when placing a top 

 story on they may then be simply set up, bees and all making sure 

 that the queen is not on them. If the combs are to be removed en- 

 tirely or placed in another hive the bees will have to be removed. 

 This is accomplished by shaking, first taking the precaution to give 

 the bees a whiff of the smoke. There are two ways of shaking. The 

 comb may be raised from its position in trre hive only far enough 

 to clasp the hand vertically under the projecting ends of the top 

 bar, and resting the hand on the edge of the hive, the comb may 

 be shaken with a jarring motion by raising the hands slightly and 

 returning them with force on the edge of the hives. The other way 

 is to remove the comb entirely from its place, and holding it by 

 the projecting ends of the top bar^ raise it slowly until the bees 



