WORKING FOR COMB-HONEY 95 



that is if she is a prolific one, and no others should be 

 kept. Where the bee-keeper has surplus brood-combs 

 it is no better to substitute these for the honey combs. 

 At any rate, the hive must be strong to do satisfactory 

 work. 



Should the queen be unequal to keeping the brood- 

 nest filled, she should be replaced by a better one. Some 

 strains require little inducement to enter comb-supers, 

 others again work under protest as it were. Should a 

 colony swarm in preference to storing honey, they should 

 be hived on frames of foundation, and a queen-excluder 

 placed over the brood-chamber, afterwards giving the 

 comb-super. 



BOLTON HIVES FOE COMB-HONEY. 



The Bolton hive is capable of special handling for 

 forcing honey into the super. In hives fitted with 

 Hoffman or Langstroth frames 9% inches deep, the bees 

 very often have a strip of honey perhaps 2 inches wide 

 along the top of each brood-frame, and it is rather a, 

 difficult matter to get them to remove it. This is 

 especially the case with black bees. Where the queens 

 are young and of a prolific Italian strain, the problem 

 is less complex. The Bolton hive claims to overcome 

 this trouble. 



As already noted, the brood-nest of this hive is 

 composed of two shallow portions, and the honey referred 

 to above is stored along the top-bars of the frames in 

 the upper portion. This is so because the natural 

 position of honey is over the brood, in the warmest place, 

 and, since this is away from the entrance, the safest 

 position from attacking robbers. Now this fact is made 

 use of with the Bolton hive. If the top portion of the 

 brood-nest is replaced by the bottom one and vice versa, 

 the band of honey now separates the two lots of brood. 

 This position of the honey is so distasteful and unnatural 

 to the colony that they immediately remove it, and the 

 only vacant cells are in the comb-super. The queen, of 

 course, then lays eggs in the emptied cells. The hive is 



