74 MANUAL OF APICULTURE. 



almost certain to do, especially if one of the combs placed above con- 

 tains some brood — a piece of queen-excluding zinc placed over the open- 

 ing between the two Lives will keep ber above, and tliree weeks later, 

 when all the brood in the combs below has matured, the box hive may 

 be removed and the combs transferred to frames, if worth using in 

 this way; but if old or composed of drone cells or very irregular in 

 shape these combs may be rendered into wax, after extracting any 

 honey that may happen to be in them. Inverting the box hive will 

 generally cause the bees to remove what honey they have stored in the 

 combs. This honey will be utilized in building out the foundation 

 placed in the added story, or, having these combs completed, the bees 

 will store in them whatever remains. If the quantity of houey in the 

 lower story is great, so that the combs above seem likely to become so 

 clogged as to give the queen but little room in which to lay, the central 

 combs should be kept free by using the extractor, so as to induce the 

 queen to take possession of them. Should it happen that the queen 

 fails to enter the superj^osed hive, the plan may be adopted of driving 

 her, with a large part of her workers, from the box hive into the new 

 story placed above, as described on i)age 7l2, the hive body with frames 

 merely taking the place of the transferring box there mentioned. 

 When the lower combs have been nearly deserted it will be safe to 

 assume that the queen has gone into the upper hive along with the 

 main force of the workers, and a sheet of excluder zinc may be placed 

 between the two hives. 



