72 DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 



Putting on Supers 



We have said enough in previous pages to suggest that we 

 are specialists in extracted honey production. The supers that 

 we use indicate it. We beheve that enough more honey may be 

 secured, from combs built previously, to much more than make 

 up for the difference in price between comb-honey and extracted 

 honey. 



Every practical beekeeper knows that beeswax is produced 

 in the body of the worker-bee, by special organs acting much 

 in the way of milk production in the cow, or in the production 

 of fat by animals like cattle or hogs. They are also aware that it 

 takes about as much honey, digested by the bees, to produce 

 a pound of comb, as it takes of food to produce a pound of fat 

 in domestic animals. This quantity is not fixed but depends in 

 its proportion upon the circumstances in which the secretion 

 is produced. It is safe, however, to assume from experiments 

 of scientists and from the experience of practical beekeepers, 

 that an average of ten pounds of honey is probably required 

 for each pound of comb. If honey is worth 15 cents per pound, 

 it indicates a cost of $1.50 for every pound of comb. 



In addition it is worth while to take into account the loss 

 of time to the bees, when they must remain idle for at least 

 a day to produce this wax, besides the time of building combs. 

 It is true that m-ost of this labor is performed by young bees 

 during the 14 days of their stay in the hive previous to field 

 work. But when a yield comes, it oftens takes old bees as well 

 as young bees to produce the needed wax. So it behooves us 

 to save comb and return it to the bees after having emptied it 

 of its honey, when it has been harvested and ripened by the 

 bees. 



Moreover, the production of extracted honey enhances 

 the facility for preventing swarming. Although the method 

 given in the former pages for the prevention of swarming is also 

 successful in comb-honey production, it is much easier to secure 

 an almost total absence of swarms with the production of ex- 

 tracted honey, because we save our super combs from one year 



