56 



Bee-l;eeping in Victoria. 



may be allowed to hatch. This should be the most perfect and for- 

 ward one, the others are destroyed. If the colonj^ is not one of the 

 best, cells raised from one of the best non-swarming stocks may be 

 given. In from fourteen to twenty days, according to the maturity 

 of the cell on day of swarming, the young queen should be laying. 

 T\\-enty-one days after swarming all the worker brood will have 

 hatched out, and the bees may be united with the swarm after 

 removing the queen of the latter (the old queen) and the combs of the 

 parent stock, if section honey is to be raised. (The method of uniting 

 is described under Swarming, Chapter IX.) The colony is now in 

 the best condition, with a young queen and new combs in the brood 

 chamber. These are very desirable when clean, white sections are to 

 be raised. From a colony manipulated in this way the writer, some 

 years ago, obtained 312 beautifully finished 1-lb. sections in what is 

 by no means a first-class locality. 



l-ll). Sections of Comlj-Honey. 



Upper tier from starters, lower tier, full sheets. 



Much of the faulty appearance of sections seen in shop windows, 

 as vvell as most of the damage comb-honey suffers in transit on the 

 railways is due to false economy on the part of the producer, who 

 provides the section boxes with only a small starter of foundation, as 

 shown in the first section of the top row in the illustration. This 

 section stands on ojie supplied with a full sheet of the thinnest founda- 

 tion (12 to 13 square feet to the lb.) and a bottom starter. 



The progress of the work of the bees may be seen in the second and 

 third pair of boxes. The third one of the top row, although almost 

 ready for sealing by the bees, is not fastened to the bottom of the 

 section ; while, .in the lower tier, the comb is already fastened to the 

 wood all round in No. 2 and completely fills the box in No. 3. 



Apart from the quality of the produce, which would be the same in 

 either case, there are two things to be considered in section honey, viz., 

 appearance and weight. A section built from a starter will be partly 

 sealed before comb-building is finished, and the cappings will often lose 



