36 



A. AND M. COLLEGE APIARY. 



tioned above in order to start brood rearing and thus have a strong force 

 of bees on hand at the very beginning of the flow if possible. Only a 

 strong colony will store honey in the supers, and keeping the colonies 

 strong is the most important point essential to success in the production 

 of surplus honey. 



SUPEES. 



As soon as the bees in gathering honey have filled up the hive-body 

 with brood and honey, a super or upper story should be given. Supers 

 are of various kinds and styles, according to the form in which the sur- 

 plus honey is desired. If "section honey," that is, honey stored in small 

 frames containing a pound each ready for market is desired, a sec- 

 tion super must be used. Two main types of sections are in common 

 use, the "bee-way section" and the "plain section." The bee-way sec- 

 tion is shown in Fig. 17. 



It will be noted that the top. and bottom of the section are provided 

 with insets or bee-ways, so that when placed side by side in the super 



Fig. 1 8. Hoffman shallow extracting frame^ 

 (After A. I. Root Co.) 



Fig. 17. Bee-way section. (From A. I. Root, 

 A B C of Bee Culture. ) 



there will be a bee-space between all of them for the entrance of the 

 bees from the brood chamber below. This style of section is rapidly 

 going out of favor and being replaced by the plain section. The latter 

 differs from the bee-way section in lacking an inset in the top and bot- 

 tom, hence its name. Instead, between each row of sections is a slatted 

 "fence" or separator, which allows of free communication not only from 

 one row of sections to another, but from section to section in the same 

 row. This has the advantage of allowing the bees to remain in an almost 

 continuous cluster among the sections instead of in almost isolated clus- 

 ters as in the bee-way sections. In addition to this, the plain sections are 

 narrower by just the depth of the bee-space in the bee-way section, and 

 therefore more of them can be placed in a super at a time. Plain sections 

 again are designated as "square" (4^x4J inches), "Danzenbaker" (4x5 

 inches), and "Ideal" (3fx5 inches). Eegarding the relative merits of 

 these, space will not be taken here for discussion ; suffice to say, that each 

 bee keeper has his choice of these and for each certain advantages can be 

 given. 



If extracted honey is to be produced an "extracting super" should be 

 used. This may be either a full depth hive-body identical with the one 



