THE AUSTRALIAN BEEKEEPERS’ JOURNAL. 
5P 
better that they be adjusted at least a week ' 
before the honey flow begins. The first supers 
put on the hives should always contain one or 
more sections having one comb built the 
previous season. These partly filled sections 
should be put away by every good beekeeper at 
tbo close of the season with scrupulous care, as 
they are very valuable. As soon as the first 
case is half filled with comb, if honey is 
coming in fast, an empty super should be 
placed beneath it and the tiering should con- 
tinue until three cases are adjusted, if mean- 
time the bees do not swarm. By the time 
the third case is ready to tier up the upper 
one will be fully sealed and ready to take off. 
In none of the operations here described should 
the bees be smoked unless they prove to be 
intractable. Any bees that cannot be handled 
during a honey flow without smoke are un- 
desirable, and should be superseded by a better 
strain. The practice of many beekeepers of 
always smoking their bees whenever they open 
a hive is not a good one. It is far more hurt- 
ful than molesting the brood chamber where 
it can be done without the use of smoke. But 
as to opening colonies for any needful purpose 
M»v< n ot been able to see that it ever did 
any harm if done with care. 
Inverting Brood Chambers . — The practice of 
inverting brood cases is no doubt one that has 
come to stay. There is no other method of 
placing the brood close up to the sections 
with equal facility and advantage. It is, 
however, a question of the proper depth of 
brood frames as to the propriety of this 
measure. Cases of very shallow combs may be 
interchanged with about the same effect, but 
I desire here to enter an objection against the 
use of very shallow brood combs. A frame of 
less than six inches in depth inside is too 
shallow for anything. It is not a question of 
wintering on such frames, for I think that bees 
can be successfully wintered on combs three 
inches deep ; nor is it a question of breeding 
when the hive is once full of bees, but the 
trouble is in making the start at breeding in 
the early spring. The whole season’s opera- 
tions are dependent on this start. A very 
shallow framo is not deep enough to allow a 
cluster of reasonable size to rear sufficient 
brood to push on the work at fruit bloom. 
From 1st to 10//i April are laid the eggs that 
will hatch out the nurse bees, for the greater 
part of the brood reared during fruit bloom 
and early -1/ay that we rely upon to gather 
the harvest. \\ e must have these early nurse 
bees or fail. We cannot get them on a frame 
less than six inches in depth in the clear, 
which is about the depth of the cluster on the 
cold days of early spring. With a deeper 
frame . inverting becomes a practical measure 
that may be depended upon in extending the 
brood area, and for the removal of the honey 
to the supers at any time before the queen 
becomes exhausted by egg laying. After that 
it is of no use to invert brood combs. But in 
any case if the queen continues to lay ex- 
tensively after the time when the eggs laid 
would hatch out non-producing workers, I 
should confine the queen on the case of brood 
containing the most sealed honey by the use 
of the honey board, placing the other case 
above it with the brood as near the supers a 
it is possible to get it, or if the combs are 
not too old and dirty I would place the case on 
the top of the supers, in which case the drones 
will find their way out of a very small passage 
near the top of the hive if they can see the light. 
The System of Contraction . — In hiving swarms 
into hives with a contracted brood space, we 
have a measure at once simple, practical and 
efficient for the purpose of increasing the pro- 
duction of comb honey. The system originated 
with and was first made known to the public 
by G. M. Doolittle. In developing it there is, 
perhaps, as much credit due to the writer as 
to anyone who first gave the outlines of the 
modern system of producing comb honey, from 
experiments made in 1883 and 1SS-1 with queen- 
excluding honey boards in connection there- 
with, in the American Bee Journal, Vol. XXI 
page 101, as I now practice it, a brood case of 
the proper size (which may contain anywhere 
from 730 to 850 square inches of comb surface) ' 
a wood and zinc queen-excluding honey board 
(which is also my invention but now given to 
| the public) and one or more section cases are 
used in which to hive all swarms. It is only 
by the use of such a hive that we can take full 
advantage of natural swarming and turn it at 
once to practical account. In my experience 
the work going on in the supers of the old 
colonies — when transferred to the new ones 
after swarming — has been accelerated and a 
larger product is obtained from those that 
swarm than from those that do not swarm. 
The brood frames in all cases are provided 
with starters as advised originally by Mr. 
Doolittle. They are cut from brood foundation 
one to two inches wide, and fastened in the 
frames with melted wax. As there are few 
combs to build we have never had much drone 
comb built, certainly not more than every 
| colony should have ; and ms the combs are 
shallow they are always built straight and 
regular, the spacing being always 1 j inches 
from centre to centre of frames. 
After hiving a swarm the new hive is placed 
on the old stand and the old one left close by 
for about three days, when wo shake as many 
bees from the combs in front of the new colony 
as can be spared and remove it to a new stand. 
If wo delay this operation later there nre often 
many bees killed from fighting. The old 
colony may not swarm again, if it does the 
queen cells nre cut out and the swarm returned. 
If it is made up of two brood cases, we can at 
this time elevate one of them to the top of the 
supers taking care that the young queen is in 
the lower case, or wo can simply place the 
• This would equal six or seven Iauigstruth frames. 
