140 FIFTY TEARS AMONG THE BEES 



sections facing brood-frames (the brood-frames were used to 

 bait the bees up into the supers), and if the brood-frames were 

 left there till the sections were sealed, the sealing would be 

 almost if not quite as dark as the sealing of brood-combs. The 

 bees seem to carry bits of the old, black brood-combs to use in 

 capping the sections. So the thick top-bar increasing the dis- 

 tance of the sections from the brood-combs helps to keep the 

 former whiter. 



NO EXCLUDER UNDER SECTIONS. 



"Before putting on the super, would you advise me to put 

 a queen-excluder (Fig. 56) over the brood-chamber?" It 

 would increase the space between the brood-combs and the 

 sections, and in that way would be a further help toward pre- 

 vention of dark cappings on the sections, and it would make a 

 sure thing as to preventing burr-combs on the bottoms of the 

 sections. But I don't believe there would be enough advantage 

 in both ways to pay for the excluders. 



I think I heard you say, "But wouldn't it pay to use ex- 

 cluders for the sake of keeping the queen out of the supers?" 

 1 may reply that the queen so seldom goes up into a super that 

 not one section in a hundred, sometimes not more than one in 

 a thousand, will be found troubled with brood. So on the 

 whole I hardly think that all the advantages to be gained from 

 using excluders would pay for the time and trouble of using 

 them. I need not consider so very niuch the cost of them, for 

 I have a lot on hand lying idle. At one time I thought I had 

 a plan for prevention of swarming by the use of excluders, 

 and was so sanguine about it that I got 150 of them. I think a 

 great deal of queen-excluders, and wouldn't like to do without 

 them, but I did not need 150 of them, for my. excluder-swarm- 

 prevention plan did not turn out to be a howling success. 



EXPERIMENTING ON TOO LARGE A SCALE. 



Allow me to digress long enough to confess that one of my 

 weaknesses is being a little too sanguine about new plans while 

 they are yet in the raw, and so experimenting on too large a 

 scale. More than one crop of honey has been lessened by means 



