28 The Townsend Bee Book 
hurried to keep pace with the workers, consequently nearly all- 
worker comb will be built. The brood-nest should be filled with 
comb during the first 23 days after the swarm is hived, for the 
queen must keep up with the workers and lay in nearly every cell 
as fast as it is drawn out, or the bees will begin to store honey in 
the cells. When this condition arrives, the bees, on the supposition 
that the queen has reached her limit, and that the rest of the 
combs will be used for storing honey, begin to build the storage 
size or the drone-cells in the brood-nest. This is likely to occur in 
about 23 days after the swarm is hived; for by this time the brood 
is beginning to hatch out in that part of the hive where the laying 
began. From this time on, the queen has nearly all she can do to 
keep the cells filled with eggs where the young bees are hatching. 
This means that the comb-building part of the hive is neglected, 
and that the bees build store or drone comb to a great extent until 
the hive is filled. 
It sometimes happens that a very late swarm will issue; and 
since the season is nearing its close, it is not possible for such a 
swarm to build more than five combs before the honey ceases 
coming in. We hive such swarms as usual, and in about two days 
five of the frames having the least combs built are removed and a 
division-board placed up against the remaining five frames, this 
five having been shoved over to one side of the hive. If a super 
is given such a swarm at the time of hiving, it must be a nearly 
finished one, as the bees will need most of their time to finish up 
the five combs in the brood-nest. If one has two of such five-comb 
colonies they can be united at the close of the season, so that there 
will be none but full-sized colonies to winter. A better plan than 
this for late swarms, or for any small after-swarms that one may 
have, is to hive them on full sets of combs taken, possibly, from 
hives in which colonies died the previous winter. This is a very 
good way to get such combs filled with bees, but some swarms 
hived in this way may need feeding for winter. 
There are artificial ways of handling bees so that they will 
build good worker combs. I refer to the plan of shaking the bees 
into an empty hive, in the same way that a swarm is hived. If a 
colony is divided into nuclei of, say, two or three combs each, and 
each nucleus given a young queen reared the same year, such little 
colonies will build very nice worker combs; but the beginner will 
not be interested in this artificial way of making increase, for he 
should stick to the natural-swarming plan for his increase until 
such time as he has had experience and made a success of getting 
