38 MONTANA EXPERIMENT. STATION 
the bees. It will be remembered that, under natural conditions, 
the brood is centrally located, and to the front with scattering cells 
cf pollen above and to the rear, followed by honey. The outside 
combs are nearly always given up to pollen in large quantities and 
to honey. In shifting combs in a colony care should be taken not 
to insert combs of this character from the outside into the middle oi 
the brood nest, as this only divides the latter, and the bees will 
not move the pollen or sealed honey, even to give place for the 
queen to lay. The honey may be gotten rid of by first extracting, 
but the pollen still remains. Such combs of necessity must be kept 
for outside combs. Drone combs are also undesirable in the brood 
nest as they lead to the production of a large and super-abundant 
number of these fellows, which, not only take a great deal of the 
strength of the colony, in the shape of care during their developmen, 
but after being matured, are only so many extra and useless idlers 
to feed. In actual practice we try to expunge all drone combs from 
the brooder chamber. In any event, a patch of drone combs half 
as big as one’s hand placed near the outside of the brood chamber 
will insure the rearing-of all the drones necessary to fertilize virgin | 
queens, for it must be kept in mind that a queen mates but once for 
life. It is also desirable to have only smooth, even combs, so that 
large patches of brood will be reared, for in broken combs the 
brood is patchy and much space is lost. Drone combs and uneven 
broken combs may, therefore, be gradually culled out and relegated 
to the top story and used for extracted honey. In removing such 
combs it is often hard to know just what to do with them, ‘as they 
may have brood in them. If they be removed when placing a top 
story on they may then be simply set up, bees and all making sure 
that the queen is not on them. If the combs are to be removed en- 
tirely or placed in another hive the bees will have to be removed. 
This is accomplished by shaking, first taking the precaution to give 
the bees a whiff of the smoke. There are two ways of shaking. The 
comb may be raised from its position in the hive only far enough 
to clasp the hand vertically under the projecting ends of the top 
bar, and resting the hand on the edge of the hive, the comb may 
be shaken with a jarring motion by raising the hands slightly and 
returning them with force on the edge of the hives. The other way 
is to remove the comb entirely from its place, and holding it by 
the projecting ends of the top bar, raise it slowly until the bees 
