CHAPTER VII 
How to Take Care of Swarms 
SOME TIMELY HINTS ON MANAGEMENT DURING THE OPEN- 
ING OF THE SURPLUS-HONEY SEASON 
It is time to put on the supers (the parts of the hive that 
contain the surplus honey) by the time the first clover-bloom is 
seen. Five days later, on opening the hives we may find that the 
bees have done nothing in the sections, and we wonder whether 
they will ever start. In three more days we possibly find that 
they have still done no work in the sections, so a super is lifted off 
and a comb of brood lifted out. If we do this we perhaps find that 
the bees are beginning to draw out the cells near the brood, and 
that they are placing new honey in these elongated cells. <A be- 
ginner, on seeing these, might think that the bees were going to 
fill the brood-combs before working in the sections; but in two 
more days we shall probably find that they have begun storing in 
the bait-section. This bait-section is one carried over from the 
previous season, placed in the center of the super to get the bees 
to work in the sections. The new sections look nice and clean 
beside this old dirty one; and no one would think of using such an 
old piece of comb were it not for the fact that the bees without 
such bait are too slow to enter the supers. 
It is several years since I used bait-sections in my comb-honey 
supers. Instead of these I use an extracting-comb in place of 
each outside row of sections. These extracting-combs are much 
superior to the bait-sections, for there is not usually enough of 
these left-over sections to provide as much of a bait as these two 
extracting-combs supply. The main reason for putting extracting- 
combs at the outside is to start the bees working on that part of 
the super that is usually finished last; namely, the outsides and 
the corners. In this way the whole super is finished nearly at 
once, and the experienced beekeeper knows that this means comb 
honey of superior quality. The editor says there is a growing 
