24 PEARCE METHOD OF BEE-KEEPING 



both bodies boiling over with bees, no loss from ascending 

 or other cause, no climbing trees as these large hives control 

 swarming naturally and give us the stuff and save us untold 

 labor and annoyance and enable us to get unlimited quanti- 

 ties of comb honey of the highest quality, a most valuable 

 thing, as the production of comb honey is most desirable in 

 so many ways. It is clean, it is nearly double in price, and 

 honey in the comb is by far better flavored than extracted 

 honey, and farther, its production should greatly assist us 

 in eliminating foul brood. 



Of all the things that I have found out about bee-keep- 

 ing there is none of near so much value to the bee-keeping 

 world as this method of swarm control, as it is accomplished 

 by the use of two of the regular Langstroth hives used as 

 one. No new fangled things are brought in or are necessary. 

 And not only is this made possible for extracted, but we 

 can produce, as you see, unlimited quantities of fine comb 

 honey without having the bees swarm naturally and then 

 later if we want increase we can have it easily, quickly 

 and cheaply in three or four ways, by just setting these 

 hive bodies apart at the end of the whits honey harvest. 

 First give a new queen to the queenless part and put on 

 extra body on each hive and you have all fall to build them 

 up for winter to be prepared for the next year. But if your 

 own stock is good and you do not wish to go to the expense 

 of sending to a queen breeder, for a queen, you can see that 

 the queen has been laying good in the upper hive. Then 

 you can drive her below and raise up your upper hive and 

 put in a super below it and an excluder on the super and 

 let your hive down onto that and in two or three days you 

 will have a fine lot of queen cells started. Then if you wish 

 to you can take out the super and let the hive down on the 

 excluder and the lower hive and then in about four or five 

 days more you will have a fine lot of queen cells capped over 

 which you can remove and divide your swarms and give 

 queen cells to each hive, not caring where the queen is. This 

 is a very easy and economical way of making increase and 

 this method would get a number of good queens from your 

 best colonies, a very desirable thing, and they surely would be 

 raised under what is known as the swarming impulse, in the 

 middle of this mammoth swarm boiling over with bees. In 

 fact, this is about identical with the way a prominent 

 breeder is raising superior strong queens that look almost 

 a third broader than the ordinary good queens on the 

 market. There are other ways, such as starting nuclei 

 ahead, etc., but these two ways of making increase are good 

 enough and by this latter way of raising your own queens 

 you have queens enough so you can give a queen cell to each 

 hive, and in this way you do not have to even look out for 

 the old queen unless you want to and it makes it most 

 economical and almost automatic and if you determined you 



