330 THE BEE-KEEPER’S MANUAL. 
B. 
New Section Frame. 
(By Rev. F. R. Corsnire—Journal of Horticulture, Feb.5, 1880.*) 
It is now well known to all apiculturists that bees build combs 
more quickly at the sides of the brood nest than they do over 
it, while in the former position they are much longer sealing the 
honey. This doubtless has its foundation in the fact that the 
necessity or even opportunity for building comb above the 
brood nest is strictly artificial, while that position is the one 
above all others favourable to the evaporation of excess of 
water in the gathered nectar ; hence here comb-building is less 
active, while sealing is most rapidly accomplished. Almost all 
true progress is the outcome of correct observation, which in 
this case gives the basis for the suggestion that sections—z. e., 
small boxes containing a single slab of comb honey—would be 
produced most rapidly, all other things being equal, by being 
started in the hive body and finished in an upper story. To meet 
this acknowledged need most of the better hives exhibited 
during 1879 contained wide frames to take sections, to hang by 
the sides of those devoted to the work of the nursery. But in 
practice these frames are exceedingly troublesome and incon- 
venient, for any trifling error in measurement is likely to make 
the sections either too tight or too loose ; and though the latter 
defect would appear to be the less perplexing, it is hardly so, 
for all spaces the bees most conscientiously close with propolis, 
which gives us much trouble in rearranging for the upper story. 
To overcome this difficulty I devised the frame, if frame it can 
be called, which was exhibited at Long Sutton and received a 
special prize. The top bar of the frame is omitted, while the 
ears are fixed firmly to the tops of the ends. The angle at one 
bottom corner is a rigid right angle, but that at the other is 
* Besides abridgment, some trifling verbal alterations have been 
necessary in this article on account of its having been originally accom- 
panied by ilustrations. These, however, may readily be dispensed 
with, and the reader has only to imagine a frame without a top bar, but 
with its sides and bottom so widened as to be exactly equal to the depth 
of the section boxes from front to back. These then lie across it side 
by side and in two tiers. 
