BEE 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 kcep swarming down, | place 
another super with empty combs or frames of foundation, neat 
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 laree 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 half-worked ones 
should be placed in each super; if these are not to be obtained 
a clean new comb may be cut int) 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 4merican 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. 
