SPRING MANIPULATION—-TRANSFERRING. 71 
workers in an emergency have stored wherever they found vacant cells, 
are made available for the queen. Before the main harvest opens it may 
even be necessary in order to keep the combs filled with brood to feed 
back gradually this extracted honey or its equivalent; but by taking 
it away and returning it gradually the object sought wil! have been 
accomplished, namely, keeping the combs stocked with brood until the 
harvest is well under way, or as long as the larger population thus 
gained in the hive can be made available. 
It is in this getting workers ready for the early harvest—hives over- 
flowing, as it were, with bees—that the skill of the apiarist is taxed to 
its utmost. The work properly begins with the close of the summer 
preceding the harvest, for the first steps toward successful wintering 
should be taken then, and unless wintered successfully the colony can 
not be put in shape to take full advantage of an early honey harvest. 
Good judgment in the application of the hints given in this chapter, 
with careful and frequent attention, will bring colonies to the chief 
spring or early summer flow of honey in good condition, with plenty 
of bees and with combs well stocked with brood, provided they have 
wintered well and have good queens. 
TRANSFERRING. 
If colonies have been purchased in box hives, it is advisable at the 
first favorable opportunity to get them into frame hives. 
Fia. 53.— Transferring—drumming the bees from a box hive into a frame hive. (Original.) 
Early in the season—that is, in April or May in middle latitudes, 
before the brood nest has reached its greatest extension and while the 
hive contains the least honey—it is not a difficult matter to drive the 
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