li 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



chamber, and at the same time increase my 

 crop of marketable honey, it was worth 

 trying. 



So I filled a number of frames with half 

 inch starters and prepared to take advantage 

 of the new departure. 



Somehow, though, it didn't seem to work 

 as it ought to, and before long I found my- 

 self scraping out these narrow starters from 

 the remnant of that lot of frames and put- 

 ting full sheets of foundation on wires in 

 their place. I was led thus to return to my 

 old practice by several considerations. 



Granting that bees sometimes seem to 

 work with greater zeal when allowed to build 

 their own combs (though this is not by any 

 means always the case), it does not necessa- 

 rily follow that it is always profitable to allow 

 them to do so. 



■\Vhen all the products of the colony are 

 counted up it may turn out that a gain in 

 one direction is counterbalanced by a loss in 

 another. 



I consider combs one of the most valuable 

 products of the apiary. I have never had 

 more than I could use profitably, and for 

 several years I have been obliged to get 

 along with a much less number than I would 

 like. Considering them in the light of an 

 important part of my working capital — al- 

 most in the light of tools — I think it profit- 

 able to have them of the best quality. A 

 sheet of all-worker comb, straight and fiat 

 as a board, filling a well braced wired frame 

 clear to the bottom and corners, is much 

 more valuable than the average comb which 

 the bees build for themselves. I use frames 

 at fixed distances, with narrow spacing, 

 therefore I want my combs straight. For a 

 variety of reasons I want my combs built on 

 wire, and this is not practicable without full 

 sheets of foundation. I do not want the top 

 bars to sag, giving room for unnecessary 

 and vexatious brace combs, and as I want 

 thin top bars, I must wire and brace them, 



I do not want any bees to raise a lot of 

 useless consumers, and I want to have some 

 control over the drones raised for breeding. 

 Last season I bought a lot of brood combs 

 from one of the principal advocates of let- 

 ting the bees build their own combs, and 

 the majority of them contained more or less 

 drone comb — some so much as to unfit them 

 for use in the brood chamber. 



Above all, I want to be able to hive a 

 swarm with the full assurance that without 

 any further looking after the hive will be 



speedily filled with straight, strong, all 

 worker combs. 



I do not think it profitable to use very 

 heavy foundation. The foundation I use in 

 the brood chamber is very light — not much 

 heavier than that used in the sections. To 

 complete it the bees are obliged to add a 

 great deal of their own wax. In the sections, 

 of course, only the thinnest foundation is 

 used, and in building out the combs and 

 capping them I think the bees find use for 

 all the wax they will produce under ordinary 

 conditions. 



If bees during a honey flow produce wax 

 whether they have any use for it or not, one 

 would suppose that colonies run for extract- 

 ed honey where they have no use for wax 

 except in capping cells, would be the ones to 

 show most the plethora of wax, but this is 

 not the case. If given plenty of room they 

 actually seem to begrudge the time and wax 

 required to cap the honey. Some successful 

 producers do not allow the honey to be cap- 

 ped at all, but the bees do not seem to be 

 troubled with surplus wax. It is only when 

 bees have more honey than they can readily 

 find room for. that they secrete wax to any 

 extent. If it is a " physical necessity " for 

 bees to secrete wax when gathering honey, 

 it ought to be a physical necessity for a cow 

 or other mammal to secrete milk when well 

 fed. We know that this is not so. The 

 secretion begins only when nature requires 

 it, and the secretion of wax by the bee is 

 probably only as required. 



We cannot afford to dispense with founda- 

 tion in the sections and it must be in full 

 sheets, too. If of proper thinness, not one 

 in a hundred could tell the difference be- 

 tween it and natural comb. In fact, some 

 of the thickest and toughest comb I ever ate 

 was made entirely by the bees. At one time 

 I followed the plan of having full sheets of 

 foundation drawn out in the brood chamber, 

 then cut up and put into sections. I thought 

 it was drawn out somewhat thinner than 

 when the foundation was placed directly in 

 the sections, thus permitting the use of 

 heavier foundation, and this freshly drawn 

 foundation sometimes had a wonderful 

 effect in getting the bees at work in the 

 sections and facilitating their labors. There 

 is too much work about this plan for the 

 professional or for anyone with more than a 

 few colonies, and I doubt if the extra labor 

 is profitable, anyhow, unless with a few sec- 

 tions in each hive. If I wanted to get the 



