ALEXANDER’S WRITINGS ON PRACTICAL BEE CULTURE 39 
mence work on your clover harvest, which here commences about June 
15. 
From an extensive experience along this line I find I can get nearly 
twice the amount of surplus by dividing as above stated over what I was 
able to acquire either by letting them go undivided or dividing in a 
way that caused the loss of a greater part of their brood. This losing 
of brood we must guard against at all times if we expect to secure a 
fine surplus. It costs both time and honey to produce it, and it is the 
principal factor in obtaining those strong colonies that give us tons of 
honey. 
Far too many bee-keepers think that the value of their apiary con- 
sists in the number of colonies they keep. This is so only to a certain 
extent; for if you had 1000 colonies and they were all weak in bees, so 
they would give you no surplus, they would not be worth as much as one 
good strong colony that would give you 200 or 300 pounds of honey. 
Several years ago one of my sons bought nine colonies of bees in 
common box hives, about the first of June. He brought them home and 
transferred them at once to movable-frame hives, and in about three 
weeks divided them, making 20 colonies of the 9 he bought, using some 
queen-cells I had on hand for his surplus colonies. He then attended to 
those 20 colonies so they were all strong at the commencement of our 
buckwheat harvest. I then lent him 20 hives of empty combs to put on 
top of his colonies to extract from. He too 2849 lbs. of extracted 
honey from those 9 colonies and their increase, and left them in good 
condition so every one came out the next spring in fine order. 
Another son, the same season, took one colony, divided into three, 
and received 347 lbs. of extracted honey. They also came through the 
following winter in good condition. I speak of these cases simply to 
show that it is not necessary to keep hundreds of colonies in order to 
get a little honey. If you will only keep strong colonies and give them 
the best of care you will soon find both pleasure and profit in bee- 
keeping. 
Now in regard to the criticism on this way of making our increase. 
I find that nearly all who have made a failure of the method have taken 
colonies that had already made some preparations for swarming by hav- 
ing eggs or larve in their queen-cells. 
I received a few letters from parties who had made a failure of this 
method in about the same way. Some had taken colonies that had 
capped queen-cells in their hives at the time they put the queen in the 
under hive, and, of course, they swarmed in a day or two.- I can not 
see that these failures are any proof of fault in the method. When we 
work with our bees we must always use some discretion in such mat- 
ters. If a colony is very strong in bees it certainly requires different 
management from one rather weak. 
In conclusion I advise you to look over all the combs very carefully 
for eggs or larve in the queen-cells of the colonies you wish to divide. 
If you find any it is sure proof of their intention of swarming; then 
