ALEXANDER'S WRITINGS ON PRACTICAL BEE CULTURE 41 



extracted honey set the hive of new drawn combs on top of the ex- 

 cluder, and the colony will all work in harmony together. If you are 

 running your bees for comb honey, put on supers of sections filled with 

 foundation. This will enable them to continue building comb, which 

 has much to do with their becoming satisfied. Now as to why this 

 method is a success: I will say it is all natural. First, the bees have 

 been gratified in their desire to swarm; their queen has returned, dur- 

 ing the four days she was in the new hive, to her normal condition of 

 egg-laying; the bees have and are working off the accumulated wax that 

 nature had given them, and they become satisfied with a new location; 

 the old colony that had a lot of young queens maturing has lost them 

 all, they hardly know how, and gladly welcome their mother home 

 again, while the bees that constituted the swarm are so demoralized by 

 losing their location that they soon form a line down one side of the 

 hive to the old entrance. This gives us again a strong full colony ready 

 to settle down to work; and, if properly cared for, they will gather 

 more honey than under any other conditions. With us, not five per 

 cent when treated as above show any desire to swarm again during the 

 season. I will admit that he who is competent to care for only a few 

 colonies may prevent swarming, and secure a fair surplus by this end- 

 less amount of tinkering with his brood; but it is unnatural, discourag- 

 ing, and demoralizing to the bees, and, if practiced by our extensive 

 honey-producers, would require so much help that, from a money point 

 of view, it could not be otherwise than a flat failure. 



I do not like to tear down the theories of any man without sub- 

 stituting something better in their place, which I am sure I have given 

 in the above. Since we practiced this method we are pleased to see a 

 colony swarm, and often wish that more of our bees would swarm than 

 do, for we are sure to get our largest surplus from colonies that are 

 treated as above described. 



I don't think that there is any other condition a colony of bees can 

 be in where they will work with such perseverance as when their desire 

 to swarm has been gratified. Some of the nearest apiaries to us have 

 swarmed a great deal this season, while we have had only 31 swarms 

 all told up to Aug. 1, and this from an apiary of 750 colonies, and about 

 20 of these were caused by a blunder we made in June. 



I speak of this small per cent of swarms during a decidedly swarm- 

 ing year to show that, while we allow our bees to carry out their natural 

 instinct, we also apply natural methods to work in harmony with their 

 desires, thus bringing two or more elements to work together, which has 

 much to do with success. 



August, 1906. 



Since the above article was published, giving our way of treating 

 undesirable increase, several letters of inquiry have been received as to 



