The Townsend Bee Book 29 
a crop of honey. In fact, there are many things to be learned be- 
fore a beginner should take up artificial ways of making increase. 
It is just a question in my mind whether there is a better or 
more profitable way of making increase in the production of comb 
honey than the natural-swarming method. In extracted-honey 
production, when the bees will not swarm enough to make up the 
winter loss, then artificial swarming must be resorted to. 
SOME CONDITIONS WHERE BEES BUILD MOSTLY DRONE 
COMB 
Any colony found rearing drone brood in the brood-nest will, 
if a comb is removed and an empty frame put in its place, build 
drone comb. It can be depended upon, moreover, that a colony 
of bees wintered over, containing a queen reared the season before, 
or one older, will build drone comb until the time it swarms. By 
this it can be seen that it is necessary to replace any combs, re- 
moved from a colony before it swarms in the sprimg or early sum- 
mer, with an empty comb or with a frame containing a full sheet 
of foundation, or else drone comb will be the result. To be sure 
that a colony will build a large per cent of worker comb it is 
necessary to remove all the brood and to cause the bees of that 
colony to begin all over again, as in the case of natural swarming; 
or, as mentioned before, the colony can be broken up into nuclei, 
each nucleus containing a young queen. 
