26 The Townsend Bee Book 
be slower in going up into the new body if this were done, and 
more honey would be left in the hive below. If the cover to the 
old hive is found nailed on when preparations are being made for 
transferring, the whole hive can be inverted and the new body 
containing the combs placed over it. 
This transferring may set the colony back a little, but not 
very much after all, and it is necessary to watch the transferred. 
colony with the rest and give super room when needed. 
With the plan that I practice myself, I secure a full crop of 
comb honey, although the transferred colony may need some help 
along the line of winter stores. My plan is as follows: A super is 
placed on the hive to be transferred, just as on any other hive 
(if the old hive has the cover nailed on, it is inverted). The colony 
is then left until it casts a swarm, which is hived on the old stand 
where the old box hive formerly stood, and the supers of sections 
shifted to the new hive. The old box hive may then be carried 
away to another part of the yard. The actual transferring in this 
case is done 17 days later, at which time the parent colony should 
have a laying queen; and, since the queen before the colony 
swarmed did not lay very much during the last four days before 
the swarm issued, there will not be much brood but what is 
hatched at the end of these 17 days. By this time it is, very likely, 
near the close of the season, so that it does not pay to wait for the 
few bees that might yet hatch from the combs; and it is better to 
allow the young bees already hatched to get to work in their new 
quarters. A new hive filled with combs of full sheets of founda- 
tion is placed where the old box hive last stood, and the side of 
the box pried off, the combs cut out, and the bees brushed in front. 
of the new hive. 
Last season some of the old combs left in the box hive were 
run through a capping-melter, and the honey and wax separated 
much more quickly than we ever did it before. 
Colonies transferred so late, or late swarms of any kind, 
ought to be hived on empty combs when possible; but if there are 
no combs, so that one must use foundation, no more frames should 
be given than the bees can finish before the close of the flow. 
There was a reason for not leaving the foundation in the hive 
during a dearth of honey, for the bees, having nothing else to do, 
seem to take delight in gnawing it, for to them it is unnatural. 
After a sheet of foundation has been in the hive three weeks dur- 
ing a dearth of honey it is almost ruined. 
