PEARCE METHOD OP BEE-KEEPING 23 



be assured a large honey crop. Several different ways have 

 been adopted to give the queens more room. 



Our veteran Bee Keeper, Alexander, used to extract 

 from the brood chamber in the spring to give his queen room 

 and feed back as needed. But this was a great deal of 

 trouble and would not fill the bill as a very prolific queen 

 might soon overflow a small hive with eggs alone. Then 

 others run for extracted honey and extract from the surplus 

 cases in order to give more room. But this is not much use 

 if the brood chamber is too small and unless the queen is 

 allowed to go above, swarming is liable to occur. None of 

 us want swarming as early as fruit bloom, it is an intoler- 

 able nuisance. A large bee-keeper a number of years ago, 

 I do not now remember his name, said if he "could only con- 

 trol this everlasting swarming he would surely have a great 

 thing." Many devices at different times by different men 

 have been gotten up to prevent swarming, but nearly all 

 have failed as it did not provide for the making of increase 

 artificially if increase is needed. Therefore it seems almost 

 certain that the great cause of swarming is the queen becom- 

 ing hampered by inadequate space to deposit eggs in spring. 

 Then if this is the cause, what is the remedy? Everything 

 points to a larger brood chamber. More and more I feel sure 

 bee-keepers are making up their minds to this. When we 

 look at the little straw hives used in Germany and other 

 countries we see clearly that our forefathers did not realize 

 the capacity needed for their bees, why a good swarm such 

 as we now have in our large hives would fill one of these 

 little hives in two days on a good honey run and have to 

 swarm out. To prevent this, we use and advise a very much 

 larger brood chamber and find that two of these hives that 

 we formerly used is none too large to hold an adequate 

 winter supply of honey and is just as much needed to hold 

 all the brood a good queen can supply up to the honey har- 

 vest. And surely it would be the height of folly to not sup- 

 ply the queen with all the needed room at such an important 

 season. And then we find it is the whole thing to prevent 

 natural swarming ; not one of all these 200 hives here have 

 swarmed this year to my knowledge and I believe I would 

 know of it if they had. It has not been as bad a year for 

 swarming as last year, but a lot of fellows have had to chase 

 around after swarms and climb trees. All of this might 

 have been spared by just putting another hive body on the 

 one the bees were in about the first of May and then putting 

 on some honey cases early so the bees could carry the honey 

 up out of this big brood nest to give the queen room and go 

 about your business till you take off your honey. If you 

 want increase, you can have it by settmg these hives apart 

 and putting two more hives on these, one on each and a 

 queen in the queenless one. As both our hives used are 

 alike and interchangeable, 8 frames dove-tailed hives, and 



