ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



203 



the broad on top, it is removed to a 

 new stand and a ripe queen cell or 

 queen given, and 'by the time the fall 

 flow comes these new colonies are 

 usually ready for a super. When a 

 laying queen is given a super of fall 

 honey is often secured and when a 

 cell or virgin is given the colony 

 often secures its winter stores. This 

 is the first season that I removed the 

 brood for increase and to ascertain 

 whether this detracted from the 

 amount of honey secured for extract- 

 ing I weighed the honey taken from 

 each hive separately. Those from 

 which brood was taken, stored just as 

 much clover honey as those in which 

 the brood was left to hatch and re- 

 turn to the parent colony. The only 

 way I can account for this is that 

 those bees do not become old enough 

 for field workers on clover, but they 

 did store a, little more fall honey than 

 those from which brood was taken, 

 but not as much as the two divided 

 colonies did; so the making of in- 

 crease would be gain, even if the bees 

 were again united after the season 

 ended. When first using this plan to 

 control swarming, fears were enter- 

 tained that so much honey would be 

 stored in the brood chamber that not 

 as much would be realized from the 

 surplus apartments, and I used dum- 

 mies in the brood chamber for two 

 weeks after shaking, giving the col- 

 ony only six combs, but I found this 

 unnecessary in the case of eight frame 

 hives; as at the close of the white 

 honey flow there are five to seven 

 combs fllled with brood. With ten 

 frame hives one dummy is still used 

 on each side, being removed after the 

 flow and replaced with empty combs 

 which are' fllled with honey for winter 

 stores. When queens dre thus forced 

 they are used only two seasons. Al- 

 though I think as Mr. Doolittle did 

 about his comb honey plan, that this 

 is head and shoulders above anything 

 ever given for the production of ex- 

 tracted honey. 



The President — 'I am sure our Man- 

 ager has given us a pice outline in- 

 deed, ^which will enable us to discuss 

 the paper without it being here. 



Mr. Huffman — Mr. President, I would 

 like to know is it the eight or ten-frame 

 hive he uses? 



Mr. France — ^The majority of them 

 are eight-frame in the out-yard. The 



home yard is all ten-frame.. He has 

 tried very much the same method for 

 comb honey production and finds it 

 works very well for that. 



Mr. Lawrence — I would like to ask 

 when he puts the excluder on that 

 bottom story what he does with the 

 drones that hatch out above? 



Mr. France — For about three days 

 the entrance to the upper one is left 

 open, that allows the drones to come 

 down, but it won't do to keep that 

 open, for the young bees would learn 

 their way in and out there. Within 

 those three days those drones ,have 

 found their way out; the balance of 

 them would have to stay up there till 

 he opens the hive for further con- 

 sideration. 



Dr. Darby — I would, like to ask what 

 he does with the queen cells that may 

 be constructed up there afterwards? 



Mr. France — There is very little 

 tendency for those queen cells from 

 the fact that the queen's new brood 

 is all away below. You have so iso- 

 lated it. Putting her below and the 

 new brood all below, the tendency is 

 to form those new queens where 

 there is young brood. Sometimes he 

 has had a queen hatched above, so 

 that there would be a plurality queen 

 in that hive, one above and one be- 

 low, and he has allowed the two to 

 remain, but Nature seems to provide 

 for one queen in a hive, and in time 

 when that excluder is taken out they 

 equalize that by the survival of the 

 fittest. 



Mr. Darby — If those" queens were 

 confined there they would in course 

 of time become drone layers, having 

 had no opportunity to get out, and if 

 something is not done you may have 

 your whole colony manned by the 

 droning queen. 



Mr. France — He is going through 

 those hives fast enough so that his 

 first turn around extracting would 

 come in the neighborhood of twelve 

 to fifteen days after making the 

 change, and at a glance he could see 

 whether the chamber where the brood 

 was was in proper condition or not. 



Mr. Darby — ^If a system of this kind 

 could be managed on somewhat of the 

 let-alone plan, how would that work? 



Mr. DeJong — I have tried that let- 

 alone plan once, and I don't see how 

 they did it, but they had a que^n up 

 in the super, and she was a drone lay- 

 er, and when I came in to extract I 



