SUPERS AND SDPEEING. 79 



think there should be a good thoroughfare and plenty 

 of room for travellers between hive and super. 



The health and strength of hives should be our guide 

 as to the time supers should be placed on them. No rule 

 can be laid down. About a week after the bees cover 

 the combs of stock-hives they may be supered. And as 

 soon as the hives of swarms are filled with combs they 

 should be supered. 



If the supers be made of wood or straw, two or three 

 bits of clean white drone-comh, well cemented or waxed 

 to labels, should be placed in and nailed to their crowns, 

 before they are put on hives. Such bits of comb tempt 

 the bees to go into them at once and commence work. 

 From the crowns of the supers to the crowns of the hives 

 we use ladders of wood about as thick as a child's finger. 

 On these the bees go up, and commence to build their 

 combs downwards. This is of great importance, for bees 

 naturally build downwards ; and where supers are thus 

 filled, the combs are squared-off and finished before they 

 touch the crowns of the hives. When only haK filled 

 they may be lifted and examined without injury. If 

 guide-combs be not used, the bees would probably com- 

 mence to fill the supers from below and build upwards. 

 Drone-combs are used in supers as guides for this reason, 

 that drones are seldom — we might venture to say are never 

 — bred in supers of ordinary sizes. These supers of 

 drone-comb are invariably filled with pure virgin-honey. 

 " But if you had no drone-comb at hand, would you use 

 bits of worker-comb instead?" Yes, certainly, to induce 

 the bees to begin at the tops and build their combs in the 

 natural way. Thus the combs in the supers are at some 

 distance from the brood-combs, till they and the supers 

 are nearly filled with honey. At the season of supering, 

 any bee-keeper may lift one of his hives and cut out of it 

 a few pieces of drone-comb to be used for supering. ' In- 



