238 BEE MANIPULA TION. [Ch. v. 



natural swarm issufes forth it has its queen, and when 

 located in a new abode it commences building worker 

 combs, leaving the building of the few requisite drone 

 combs to a later period. But if a division of the hive 

 should be made, by putting half the combs in one hive 

 and half in another, the hive that is either queenless or 

 contains an embryo queen will busy itself with building 

 only drone comb (see page 17) ; thus a number of recep- 

 tacles for useless bees are provided, while all the time 

 the colony is rapidly dying off from the wear-and-tear of 

 the working season. 



In the plan we have recommended for forming two 

 separate families we nearly follow the natural course of 

 things ; the comb that the queen is upon is the only one 

 that is taken from the hive, and this vacancy should be 

 filled in by moving the frames together, so as to leave the 

 empty frame at the end. The swarm under the govern- 

 ment of the queen construct the combs, and furnish 

 their new abode, as before stated, with worker cells. By 

 adopting the plan above described, the movable-frame 

 hive will prove far superior to any of the dividing-hives, 

 which provide for equal division of the combs. 



There are, however, quite a host of other modes of 

 procedure more or less varied from the above, and their 

 number is doubtless capable of almost unlimited exten- 

 sion. Mr. Langstroth, in the tenth chapter of his " Honey 

 Bee," describes a considerable variety of them, nearly all 

 of which are accomplished wholly or in part by the 



