TRANSFERRING. 
73 
be so firm as not to need nails or sticks, but in the heat of the hive, and 
with the weight of the bees that will cluster on it to repair the cut edges 
and fasten them to the bars of the frame, unsupported combs are very 
apt to give way, creating disastrous confusion. Thus the sticks, nails, 
or their equivalent should always be used (fig. 54). All frames should 
be filled with perfectly straight combs so as to be ii terchangeable. 
With care in fitting in and some trimming and pressing into shape 
afterwards, fully three-fourths of the worker combs cut from box hives 
can be made into good, serviceable combs in frame hives. The process 
is much facilitated if such combs are used in the extractor during the 
first season or two after transferring. 
Should the time be near the swarming season the combs will be so 
filled with brood and honey that the task will be much greater, and the 
transfer should be postponed until three weeks after the first swarm 
issues. The brood left by the old queen will have matured and issued 
from the cells by that time, and the young queen, if no accident has 
Fig. 54.— Transferred comb and inserted queen cell. (Original.) 
happened to her, will have begun laying; yet there will usually be only 
eggs, with perhaps a few very young larvie. present in the combs at this 
time, so that the cutting out and fitting of the latter into frames will 
not be as troublesome nor attended with so much waste as just before 
the swarm issued. 
Still another plan — one which it would not be best to employ before 
fairly warm weather has set in, but which will render the work of 
transferring the lightest — is to turn the box hive bottom upward and 
place on it the brood apartment of a frame hive, having in it frames 
filled with worker combs or with comb foundation, arranging at the 
same time to give the bees ready access from their combs to those above 
and no entrance to their hive except through the frame hive above. 
This can easily be done by making a temporary bottom board for the 
frame hive, with several holes through it. or with one large one about 
the size of the open end of the box hive. As soon as it is perceived 
that the queen has taken possession of the new combs — as she will be 
