BKE MANUAL. 235 



boxes should be put on before the bees make the slightest pre- 

 parations for swarming. 



My own method is to place the surplus boxes on when the 

 hives are fairly full of bees, plenty of young ones emerging, the 

 weather warm, and honey commencing to come in pretty 

 steadily, taking care to get them on before any queen cells are 

 started. To induce the bees to start work at once in them I 

 lift one or two of the side frames from the lower hive con- 

 taining honey only, with the adhering bees, and place them in 

 the centre of the top box, with an empty comb between them, 

 replacing thuse from below with empty combs, which may be 

 put toward the centre of the brood nest. By this plan 

 swarming is kept back, and in the course of a day or two, if 

 the weather is favourable, comb-building and honey storing 

 will be going on above. As the season advances and more 

 honey is being gathered, and the top box is getting well 

 stocked with workers, if I wish to keep swarming down, 1 place 

 another super with empty combs or frames of foundation, next 

 the lower hive under the super already on, and commence to 

 extract from the combs wholly or partly sealed, always taking 

 care to keep the lower super well supplied with empty combs. 

 After a while the hive contains an enormous force of workers, 

 and when it does throw off a swarm it is an extra large one — 

 one that is large enough to occupy a hive and surplus boxes at 

 once ; while if the queen cells are cut out of the parent stock 

 and it is supplied with a young laying queen it will scarcely 

 feel the loss of the swarm. Or even if nothing more be done 

 than to prevent after swarms issuing, the colony will not be 

 long before it is in a very strong condition again. 



The same method applies when raising comb-honey, but to 

 induce the bees to enter the sections some ha'f-worked ones 

 should be placed in each super ; if these are not to be obtained 

 a clean new comb may be cut intj sizes to fit the sections and 

 fixed in them.* If the broad frame system be adopted, then 

 half-story supers should be used, and as soon as the bees 

 are fairly started to work in the first one another should 

 be placed underneath. The same applies to section cases, 



* Mr. J. B. Mason, in a late issue of the American Bee Journal, says, that 

 if a section or two with the "young wax- workers," that is, the bees just com- 

 mencing to draw out the combs, be transferred from some other hive to the 

 new super, it will cause the bees to take charge of it at once. 



