ALEXANDER'S WRITINGS ON PRACTICAL BEE CULTURE 27 



the advice of some writers on this subject, and saved a large number 

 of heavy combs to give our bees during the spring, to Increase early 

 breeding; but with very few exceptions these heavy combs Inserted near 

 the brood about May 1 did far more harm than good. If we uncapped 

 them It was sure to start a bad case of robbing; If they were left capped, 

 then they simply formed a division-board which prevented the queen 

 from spreading her brood across the hive, and, consequently, we had a 

 small brood-nest which gave us a small colony during the entire summer. 



After realizing the folly of this erroneous method of spring feeding 

 we commenced to extract all capped honey from the brood-nest about 

 May 1, and in its place, when necessary, we fed a little warm thin honey 

 or sugar syrup daily for about a month. This soon gave us strong full 

 colonies; and the best of It was, we soon had our hives packed with 

 brood from side to side, and top to bottom. In this way of preparing 

 our bees for summer we can secure three or four thousand pounds of 

 old honey before fruit-bloom, and leave our colonies in 100 per cent 

 better condition than they would have been had this old honey been 

 left in their combs. 



About 9 A.M. on a cool cloudy morning before the bees had com- 

 menced to work in the fields, I counted 237 colonies in the apiary that 

 had the fronts of their hives completely covered with bees that had been 

 on the outside of their hives night and day for many days, except when 

 the flowers were secreting nectar; then it sometimes seemed as if twenty 

 or more swarms were In air over the apiary all day. 



Some may say that we should have put two or more hives of ex- 

 tracting-combs on each strong colony in order to have secured more 

 honey. To those I wish to say that I never saw a colony so strong that 

 it was necessary to have more than one set of extracting-combs on at 

 a time. I have been all over this ground for 30 years; and in order to 

 secure the best results, all things considered, I don't care to have more 

 than one set of extractlng-combs on a hive at any one time during the 

 season. Now, do you think for a moment that such strong colonies 

 could ever be obtained from hives that had their brood-nest partly filled 

 with old capped honey, especially when there had been heavy combs 

 Inserted near the center of the hive, such combs forming a complete 

 division-board through the brood-nest or a little to one side? When we 

 visit our friends' apiaries and find only an occasional colony working 

 in their supers, if we should take a smoker and open these hives that 

 are doing little or nothing, nine times out of ten we should find that 

 their brood-nest was so surrounded with capped honey that the queen 

 could hardly find room enough to rear the necessary brood for a good- 

 sized nucleus. 



About the first of August a bee-keeping acquaintance called to see 

 me in regard to his not securing any surplus this summer. He was a 

 man of considerable experience with bees, and had fairly good Italians. 

 He was using lO-frame Langstroth hives, and had in the spring about 

 100 colonies that had wintered well, and was heavy in honey when 



