86 A YEAR'S WORK IN AN OUT-APIAKY 



Buch a super under one in which the bees are at work often proves a 

 great damage, especially in a poor season. Therefore, as a rule, during 

 late years I never raise a partly full super up from the brood-chamber 

 unless I can place one underneath it, in which the bees have commenced 

 to work more or less. 



Those colonies which have not yet commenced work in the upper 

 super, or have only just begun, are left as they are, as such have all 

 the room they will need until the next visit. In changing these supers 

 I can not resist the temptation to look into the brood-chambers of two 

 or three of the colonies, and in doing so I find the comb given them as 

 a "starter," which was from one-eighth to one-fourth full of brood when 

 placed in the center of the hive at time of "shook swarming," ten days 

 ago, is literally filled with brood, two-thirds of which is sealed over, 

 while six of the remaining nine frames, which were nearly full of honey 

 at that time, have three-fourths of the honey removed from them, while 

 the emptied cells are teeming with brood from the egg to larva in all 

 stages of growth. This shows that the colonies are in a very prosperous 

 condition; and should favorable weather come, a good harvest of white 

 honey may yet be obtained. After a careful looking over to see that 

 all things are in good shape for leaving I say good by to the pets at the 

 close of this, my first visit, to the out-apiary; and in the above the 

 reader has a record of what was done at this visit. 



CHAPTER VI. 



HOW TO SAVE UNNECESSAET LIFTING IN TAKING OFF FILLED SUPERS OF HONEY. 



But favorable weather did not come and continue; for on the very 

 next day in the afternoon another rainstorm commenced and bad 

 weather continued the most of the time during the next eight days, 

 at the end of which the clover bloom is nearly past. We now have a 

 few days of fine bee weather, still and clear, with hot days and nights, 

 which the bees improve as best they can on the few nectar-giving flowers 

 which are still in bloom. The first blossom-buds on the basswood-trees 

 commenced to open on the sixth day of July, and I hoped that the good 

 weather would continue right along; but with the afternoon of the sev- 

 enth a two-days' rain commenced, which kept the bees in the hive nearly 

 all the time. It is now the tenth day of July, and fifteen days since my 

 last visit to the out-apiary. As there is a prospect of a fine day I start 

 to make my sixth visit to that enchanting place. Before going, how- 

 ever, I catch and cage three just-laying queens, from as many nuclei in 

 the home yard, that I may be prepared to give them to any of the nine 

 colonies I made at the last visit, which may, by any means, have failed 

 to get a laying queen from the cells then given, taking them, together 



