THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



173 



as natural swarms; for instance, at times, 

 many of them abscond: and so do natural 

 swarms, at times, and I don't know just 

 why. 1 have known a few natural swarms 

 to abscond every bright day, and build 

 drone comb until they dwind'ed to a mere 

 handful; but more artificial swarms seem 

 to turn out this way. 



One plan is to open a hive that is pre- 

 paring to swarm, cutting out and remov- 

 ing the brood, leaving the honey parts in 

 the frames, and this colony will take right 

 hold of business from the start, and will 

 be no more likely to swarm than would a 

 natural swarm. In this case the brood 

 combs are set in a box with a screen cone 

 in one side, and moved up close to the en- 

 trance of the old hive; and this colony 

 makes a boomer to work in sections as 

 the young bees are constantly reinforcing 

 the old stand. This plan keeps down all 

 increase and gives an excellent crop of 

 honey of prime quality, if any is to be 

 had. 



This hatching-box as an extra would 

 have to be kept as stock on hand, but I 

 think no one need fear results. The 

 combs would have to be melted into wax 

 as soon as the young bees were hatched. 

 Those cut off combs of brood, when set 

 in the hatching-box, must be. kept spaced 

 so as not to let one comb of brood touch 

 the other, and a few old bees must be run 

 in with the same to clean up what honey 

 might be dripping, and to furnish heat to 

 keep the bees hatching. Again, there 

 should be enough honey cut out with those 

 brood combs to last until all bees are 

 hatched. 



One plan which I have tried on a small 

 scale is to set a number of combs on popu- 

 lous colonies for the purpose of getting 

 them filled with the first honey that comes 

 in, then use those combs of honey for hiv- 

 ing shook swarms on, one comb in the 

 center of each hive that a new shook 

 swarm is to be run into. This comb of 

 honey seems to serve two purposes; first 

 it causes the bees to stay better; second, 

 this comb is emptied by the bees and the 

 honey carried up into the sections that 



already contain newly built combs and 

 some honey. The bees seem to get the 

 habit at first of going up into the sec- 

 tions, and thus keep it up, a thing of itself 

 of much importance. Then the queen 

 seems to be more willing to go to laying 

 in this old comb, and at the same time, 

 generally, a goodly amount of worker 

 comb will be built. Whether the bees are 

 allowed to swarm naturally, or treated as 

 above, all bees, for the first ten or twelve 

 days, should be run over into the new 

 swarm, as comb-builders and recruits in 

 general for the working colony. 



While I think it would be decidedly bet- 

 tsr to have colonies that would go right 

 on without getting the swarming fever at 

 all, colonies treated as above will, as a 

 rule, give a fair account of themselves in 

 the way of some very nice comb honey. 



To manipulate colonies so as not to 

 swarm at all when run for comb honey is 

 a thing yet to be discovered. All that I 

 have been able to accomplish is to retard 

 and to bring about conditions that will 

 cause the swarms to come on in a rush at 

 the right time. This can be accomplished 

 by bringing all colonies up to the begin- 

 ning of clover bloom all of one strength, 

 and when honey begins to come in with- 

 draw two frames of capped brood from 

 each colony, and replace with full sheets 

 of foundation. Or this may be let go, and 

 the swarms will come on about one week 

 sooner, and a larger number of swarms 

 will be the result. In any case, a super 

 full of sections should be set on at the 

 first appearance of honey; and there 

 ought to be a full row of bait-sections 

 along each out side row. These bait sec- 

 tions should first be leveled by a Taylor 

 comb leveler. This will help much in 

 keeping down swarms. 



If it happens that we have not man- 

 aged to keep down an increase, we could 

 have the extra colonies converted into 

 honey, so as to have only our usual num- 

 ber to go into winter quarters. 



If there is no fall flow, better run all 

 extra bees into the working colonies dur- 

 ing the clover, or basswood, or sweet clo- 



