24 DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 



the surface to the center of this ball, we may imagine how unwelcome 

 it is to them to be obliged to divide their stores between four separate 

 apartments, each of which is 4 inches square and 12 inches long, with 

 no communication between these apartments." 



All the experiments made by us led us to the conclusion 

 that we could produce twice as much honey in frames located 

 above the brood combs, without hindrances to the travel back 

 and forth of the workers, the honey to be taken out of these 

 with the honey extractor which had then just been invented, 

 as we had ever produced in small sections or boxes. 



But whether to use the double story, or a shallow story 

 for super, on the top of the large brood-chamber, was a question 

 upon which we had to experiment, for very little had been 

 done in this line. 



The experiment was made on a large number of hives 

 both with the deep brood-chambers and the Langstroth hives. 

 With the former the matter was settled at once. The brood 

 combs were altogether too large to be used in a super. There 

 was too much danger of heavy combs breaking down, when 

 full of honey, too much trouble in extracting. Besides, a deep 

 super seemed to attract the queen, when a shallow super did 

 not. With the Langstroth brood chambers, the objections to 

 a deep upper story were not so flagrant; yet they appeared to 

 us quite sufficient to condemn it. There was often too much 

 room at one time, so much so that a number of people who 

 double the size of their brood-chamber, previous to the honey 

 crop, often think it necessary to add the second story at the 

 bottom, instead of the top. Then these combs were not so 

 handy as those that we adopted at tha,t time, for extracting 

 combs, with the advice of Mr. Langstroth. Shallow frames, 

 such as have been offered by dealers, are too shallow. Those 

 that we use are of the right size to be uncapped at one stroke 

 of the knife and yet they contain nearly 100 square inches of 

 comb, or over two thirds of the capacity of a standard Lang- 

 stroth brood-frame. Although we have often heard beekeepers 

 say that they could not tolerate two different sizes of frames 

 in their apiary, we find less objection to these extracting 



