5 COMB HONEY. 25 
(3) Colonies should be in a normal condition at the beginning of this 
period. (a) Ifthe surplus is from an early flow, this normal condition 
can be obtained only by proper management the previous late summer 
and autumn, together with good wintering. Good queens, preferably 
young, together with sufficient room for brood rearing and winter 
stores, are important conditions during late summer and autumn. 
(6) Stores and protection are important factors in early brood rear- 
ing. (c) The character of the brood combs and the race of bees each 
have some influence upon brood rearing. 
(4) During the time that workers for the harvest should be reared 
brood rearing should be constantly accelerated. 
(5) Brood rearing is often restricted during this period (a) because 
of limited stores and (6) because of limited room in the brood chamber. 
Using Available Workers to Best Advantage During the Honey Flow. 
_ Brood rearing, which is of primary importance during the preceding 
period, becomes of secondary consideration at about the beginning of 
the honey flow, because this is nearing the limit beyond which time 
the resulting bees develop too late to take part in gathering and storing 
the crop of honey. At this time, therefore, there is a radical change 
in purpose of the manipulations. Instead of continuing the expan- 
sion of the brood chamber, the policy of the beekeeper should now 
be rather a concentration of the workers and brood. There is perhaps 
a limit to the number of workers that can be profitably kept in a single 
hive and set of supers, but this limit is seldom reached, the usual 
mistake being in having too few. Each colony should have its brood 
chamber well filled with brood in a compact form and be so crowded 
with young and vigorous workers that they will immediately occupy 
the supers when the honey flow actually begins. The brood chamber 
of colonies occupying more than one hive body should at this time 
be reduced to one, any extra brood being used in colonies having less 
than one brood chamber full of brood. After this operation, should 
there still be some colonies left with the brood chamber but partly 
filled with brood, they should be filled with combs of brood and 
adhering bees (without the queen) drawn from some colony or colonies 
too weak to work well in comb-honey supers. 
It may be advisable to unite the weaker colonies in order to secure 
the proper strength for the best work. This massing of the workers 
in strong colonies, so essential to the production of a fancy grade of 
comb honey, renders necessary extremely careful and skillful man- 
agement, since the efforts of the beekeeper may still be nullified in 
either of two ways: (1) The bees may divide their forces by swarm- 
ing into two or more parts, neither of which would be ready to work 
in the supers until the season is much advanced or perhaps closed 
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