COMB HONEY. 9 
a strong tendency toward the use of the 10-frame hive body as a 
medium-sized brood chamber which may be used as a unit of a larger 
elastic brood chamber when necessary. 
The comb-honey producer is more exacting as to certain details of 
construction of hives than is the producer of extracted honey since 
it is more necessary for him to handle individual brood frames during 
the honey flow. The spaces! above and between the top bars of the 
brood frames must be accurate or they will be bridged with burr and 
brace combs and these filled with honey. Burr and brace combs 
make the removal and readjustment of the super and the manipula- 
tion of frames a slow and disagreeable task, to say nothing of the waste 
of material, which should have been placed in the sections in the begin- 
ning. The use of the slatted honey board (fig. 2), while preventing 
brace combs between itself and the 
super, does not prevent the building 
of burr and brace combs between 
and above the top bars of the 
frames. This trouble is largely 
eliminated by properspacing. Most 
hive manufacturers are at present 
making the top bars of the brood 
frames of such a width that the 
spaces between them is from one- 
fourth to five-sixteenths inch with 
the same spacing above them. The 
difficulty, however, is in maintain- 
ing this spacing with any great 
degree of accuracy. Self-spacing 
frames? are a partial solution of 
this difficulty. In some localities, Fie. 2.—Pertorated zinc queen excluder. (From 
however, the ordinary self-spacing ee 
frames are so badly propolized as to render their removal from the 
brood chamber difficult as well as materially to interfere with the 
_proper spacing. The advantages of such frames are then nullified, 
while their disadvantages are retained or even intensified. In such 
localities metal spacers having but small surfaces of contact are some- 
times used. Some beekeepers prefer omitting the spacers entirely. 
However, some of the difficulties arising from the use of self-spacing 
frames are the result of carelessness on the part of the operator in 
1A bee space, or that space in which bees are least inclined to put comb or propolis, is perhaps a scant 
one-fourth inch. In hive construction one-fourth or five-sixteenths inch is usually used. 
2 These are so constructed that the end bars are one-fourth or five-sixteenths inch wider thar the top 
bars throughout a portion of their length or furnished with projections of metal fitted to the edges of the 
frame. In either case the adjustment is such that when the frames are crowded together in the hive the 
spaces between the top bars will be correct. 
45222°—Bull. 503—12——2 
