62 Advanced Bee Culture 



I think that at least eighty per cent of them were as perfect as it would 

 be possible to secure by the use of full sheets of foundation. A much 

 larger percentage was perfect when I was using mostly the Langstroth 

 frame, and contracted the brood-nest to only five frames. This made 

 the top of the brood-nest, where the bees commence their combs, so 

 small that the swarm completely covered it. All of the combs were 

 thus commenced at the same time. As a rule, they were nearly as per- 

 fect as possible, at least so far as straightness was concerned. When 

 I came to using the Heddon hive more extensively I discovered that 

 the greater surface at the top allowed room for the starting of more 

 combs, that the outside combs would not always be started so soon as 

 the center ones, and this sometimes resulted in the bulging of some of 

 the combs. 



Sometimes drone comb will be built in spite of contracted brood- 

 nests. Usually this is the result of old queens. But then, we can't 

 always have young queens, hence I can only repeat that this method 

 gives excellent results in the wa}* of surplus, but can not be depended 

 upon always to furnish perfect brood-combs. Some keep watch of 

 the brood-combs while they are being built, cutting out crooked, bulged, 

 or drone comb, and using it in the sections. I can not think favorably 

 of such work. When I hive a swarm I wish that to be the end of the 

 matter. No opening of brood-nests, and puttering with imperfect combs, 

 during the hurly-burly of swarming-time, would be desirable for me. 

 But I do think favorably of contracting the brood-nests when hiving 

 swarms, then uniting colonies at the end of the season, culling out the 

 imperfect combs and rendering them into wax. I think all such combs 

 are built at a profit. 



If securing straight, all-worker combs is not the greatest advantage 

 arising from the use of foundation, it is certainly next to the greatest. 

 The advantages of having each comb a counterpart of all the others, 

 to be able to place any comb in any hive — in short, to have each inter- 

 changeable with all the others, and to be able to control the production 

 of drones, to have them reared from such stock as we desire, and in 

 such quantities, no more and no less, all these are advantages that can 

 not be ignored, even at the cost of filling our frames with foundation, 

 and securing a little less surplus. We must have straight worker combs. 

 If they can be secured without foundation, well and good; if not, it 

 must be used. By using weak colonies or queen-rearing nuclei or by 

 feeding bees in the fall, straight all-worker combs may be secured at a 

 profit. 



Perhaps the greatest immediate profit arising from the use of foun- 

 dation is not so much in the saving of honey that would otherwise 

 have been used in the elaboration of wax as in the quickness with which 



