80 The Townsend Bee Book 
by dividing it in the middle, giving each half an equal part of the 
bees, brood, and combs of honey. Each half is also given a ripe 
queen-cell; and although one of them will have the virgin and 
will, therefore, destroy the cell, it saves work in the end and is 
the better way. By making these nuclei of the divided brood 
early, these breed up rapidly and make just as good colonies for 
winter as if the brood had not been divided. There is this differ- 
ence, however; that is, brood not divided in halves in the way I 
described might have enough stores for winter, while the two 
halves of the divided brood would have to be fed some syrup to 
carry them over to the next season. 
While this latter plan costs only half as much honey in the 
first place as does the plan first described under the heading, ‘‘The 
Alexander Plan of Making Increase,’’ yet more sugar has to be 
fed for winter stores, but not enough more to offset what is gained, 
and it is, therefore, a very good plan. It will be noticed that, in 
the plan of making two nuclei from the brood of one colony, only 
half as many colonies need to be disturbed to make up the winter 
loss, and in those which are disturbed to make up such loss, the 
colonies left on the old stand containing the working force are in 
about the same condition after the brood is removed, as to the 
amount of honey that would be stored, as a new swarm would be 
if hived on the old stand. 
THE ALEXANDER PLAN AS WORKED FOR INCREASE 
In making up winter losses I have advised the use of drawn 
combs. In making increase, frames of wired foundation are used 
instead. Sometimes it happens that we have both increase and 
winter loss to make in the same yard, and in such a case a frame 
of brood containing the queen is placed in a hive containing frames 
of foundation. A queen-excluder is placed on top of this, and then 
the brood over the excluder so that all is on the old stand just as 
usual. On the eighth day the brood is set off on a new location, 
and is used to make up the winter loss as I have explained. 
The difference lies in the fact that no story of extracting- 
combs is given the colony until the foundation has all been drawn 
out and filled with honey and brood; for, were we to give all the 
comb room the bees would use above, the foundation would be 
neglected, and probably there would be no colony at all, so to 
speak, for the bees might not have more than two frames of foun- 
dation drawn out, nearly the whole force of workers being above. 
In order to avoid having seven-tenths of the hive below untouched. 
