COMB HONEY. q 
very small building at each apiary, though in comb-honey production 
this is not really necessary. 
The honey room should be so located that it will receive the heat 
from the sun, preferably an upstairs room immediately under the 
roof. When so located a small hand elevator should be installed for 
taking the honey up and down. The room should be papered or 
ceiled inside to keep out insects and to permit fumigation if necessary 
and should contain facilities for artificially heating in case continued 
damp or freezing weather should occur before the honey is marketed. 
The honey room should be provided with ample floor support for the 
great weight that may be placed upon it. 
Hives. 
A beehive must serve the dual purpose of being a home for a colony 
of bees and at the same time a tool for the beekeeper. Its main 
requirements are along the line of its adaptation to the various manip- 
ulations of the apiary in so far as these do not materially interfere 
with the protection and comfort it affords the colony of bees. Since 
rapid manipulation is greatly facilitated by simple: and uniform 
apparatus, one of the fundamental requirements of the equipment in 
hives is that they be of the same style and size, with all parts exactly 
alike and interchangeable throughout the apiary. While the hives 
and equipment should be as simple and inexpensive as possible, con- 
sistent with their various functions, a cheap and poorly constructed 
beehive is, all things considered, an expensive piece of apparatus. 
In this country the Langstroth (or L) frame (93 by 17% inches) 
(fig. 1) is the standard frame and throughout this paper frames of 
brood will be discussed in terms of this size of frame. The advantages 
of standard frames and hives are so great that the beekeeper can not 
afford to ignore them for the sake of some slight advantage of another 
size. 
There is, however, a wide difference of opinion as to the number of 
frames that should be used in a single hive body. The wide variation 
in the building up of colonies previous to the honey flow in different 
localities and seasons, the race of bees, and the skill of the beekeeper 
are all factors entering into this problem, which make it improbable 
that beekeepers will ever fully agree on this point. The races that 
build up more rapidly in the spring are, of course, other things being 
equal, able to use to advantage a larger brood chamber than the races 
that are more conservative in brood rearing. It is also noticeable 
that within certain limits as the beekeeper’s skill in building up his 
colonies for the flow increases, so the size of the brood chamber 
best adapted to his purpose increases. In other words, while the 
careful and skillful beekeeper may succeed in having large brood 
508 
