54 ALEXANDER’S WRITINGS ON PRACTICAL BEE CULTURE 
honey in the hive below, and then only one entrance where the sun 
can shine down on the bees through the hottest hours of the day. This 
will make almost any colony restless, and frequently start a desire to 
swarm. 
The honey-producer, until recently, has been justified in keeping 
his queens longer than one year, for it is only since Pratt gave us his 
method of rearing queens that we can have all we want early in the 
season with only a little trouble. If you will do as I have suggested 
in the above you will almost wholly prevent the desire to swarm. 
Next we will consider the matter of a steady harvest, with no lost 
days, even if the flowers do fail to, secrete nectar for several days at a 
time. This can easily be acquired in this way: First divide your apiary 
into two equal parts as to number of colonies, but have all your strong- 
est colonies in one part and your weakest ones in another. Then run 
the weak colonies wholly for extracted honey and the stronger colonies 
for comb honey; and attach a good practicable feeder under every hive 
that is producing comb honey, and extract all you can from your weak 
colonies and feed it to those that are working in sections. Be sure to 
give them some every night. If the weather is fine, and they are getting 
considerable from the flowers, it will not be necessary to give them 
much; but if from any cause they fail to gather from the flowers, then 
feed enough to keep them busy in their sections night and day, with no 
stop until the harvest is over and every section is finished in fine 
shape. 
Now don’t say this can not be done, for I know it can. I used 
to produce comb honey in this way twenty-five years ago, and I am 
sure fifty colonies managed like this, with fifty more to furnish them 
with honey during bad weather, to work over into comb honey, will 
produce more first-class section honey than you could possibly obtain 
from the 100 colonies if they were all run for comb honey at the same 
time, as nearly all comb-honey producers do. The point is right here: 
In this way your comb-honey-producing colonies can have a good steady 
harvest from the day you put on your first clamp of sections until the 
last section is finished, and that is what counts, both in quantity and 
quality. 
Nor, don’t get this method mixed up with that of feeding back at 
the close of the harvest, but do the feeding when the harvest is on 
and every thing is in proper condition to produce comb honey. Make 
your extracted honey quite thin and give them one grand big harvest, 
and you will see your sections finished as if by magic. With two clamps 
of sections on, and a good young queen in the hive below, you need 
not be afraid of their storing too much in their breeding-combs. Then 
examine them often; and as fast as you can find five or six full sections 
in a clamp take them out; don’t leave them to become soiled and travel- 
stained by the bees, in order that you may save yourself a little work, 
and take off a whole clamp at a time; for, as sure as you do, your bees 
are liable to sulk away their time and possibly fix for swarming. 
