ALEXANDER’S WRITINGS ON PRACTICAL BEE CULTURE 37 
end of the season; for without strong colonies we can not expect much 
surplus. As the day is now past when natural swarming is desired by 
any progressive bee-keeper, we will turn our attention to some practical 
way of making artificial increase. 
The most common way of doing this is either forming nuclei and 
afterward building them up into strong colonies, or dividing a strong 
colony at once by putting the greater part of the bees with their queen 
in an empty hive on the old stand and setting the old hive containing 
the brood away some distance in a new place. Each of these methods 
has some serious faults. The nucleus method usually requires so much 
time that frequently the best part of the harvest is past before they are 
in condition to take advantage of it. They also require much work and 
attention, and the other way of dividing the strong colony is all wrong 
in every respect. 
I think I hear some of you say, “Yes, but that is about the same as 
natural swarming, only the old hive is set on a new stand.” 
I will admit it is something the same, though not half so good; for 
in natural swarming the old hive on its old stand retains part of its 
working force, and matures all its brood; whereas if divided, as is fre- 
quently done after its queen and most of its working force are left on 
the old stand, and it finds itself in a new place without its queen, the 
greater part of the bees that have ever been out to fly will return to 
the old stand and juin the swarm,-leaving the old hive with all its brood 
in a deserted condition. Then the few remaining bees will destroy every 
egg and nearly all the uncapped larve. Here you lose enough brood, 
many times, to make nearly a swarm. 
After studying on this subject for many years, and trying every 
thing I could think of to prevent this loss of brood in making our in- 
crease, and at the same time avoid the loss of valuable time in fussing 
with nuclei, and at all times keeping every colony in good condition to 
take advantage of any unexpected harvest that might come, I hit on 
what I consider the most practical way of making increase of any thing 
I have ever tried or heard of. It is this: 
When your colonies are nearly full enough to swarm naturally, and \ 
you wish to divide them so as to make two from one, go to the colony 
you wish to divide; lift it from its stand and put in its place a hive 
containing frames of “com mb_or found: dation, the same as you would put 
ire swarm in providing it had just swarmed. Now remove the center 
comb from your empty hive, and put in its place a frame of brood, 
P< ceaanaIaae 
either from the hive you wish “to divide or some other colony that can 
spare one, and be sure you find the queen and put her on this frame of 
brood in in, the” new “hive; also look it over or very carefully to to see that it 
contains no “eggs, “or larve in any queen-cells. Tt it does, , destroy them. 
Now put a queen- -excluding honéy-board on on top of this new hive that 
contains _the queen a and frame of brood with their empty combs, then 
set your “full queenless colony on ‘top of the excluder; put -in the empty 
