THE AUSTRALIAN BEEKEEPERS’ JOURNAL. 
171 
body. As bees naturally store their honey above 
their brood, these chambers are generally placed 
over the hive, and thence are called •' supers.” 
A straw skep having a large central hole may be 
supered, if first a thin flat board be fixed over it, 
tempered clay or something of the kind being 
used between the hive and board to give the 
latter a firm resting place, and to prevent the 
escape of heated air. All supers, whether on 
skeps or frame-hives, must be well protected by 
some warm covering of flannel or cloth or other 
such like material. They should also be furnished 
with guide comb or foundation, and if they be 
of glass this is the more necessary, or otherwise 
the bees, being unable to hold to the roof so as 
to commence their comb in the natural way. will 
be obliged to build upwards, which is a slow and 
wasteful process, and combs so built are liable to 
fall over, and thus spoil the appearance of the 
super. To fix guide combs to glass, some pieces 
of perfectly clean, empty comb should be taken, 
the glass should now be slowly warmed, when 
the combs, by simple pressure and a gentle 
rubbing movement, will stick sufficiently. Ti e 
bees, if ready for super work, that is, if really so 
strong in numbers as to begin to feel crowding 
while they are gathering honey freely, will form, 
by linking themselves together by their hooked 
feet, a ladder between the bottom of the guide 
comb and their hive proper, and will start at 
once the work of fixing and building. But glass 
supers, however beautiful to look at when filled, 
are uncertain both on account of the bees in 
them being disturbed by the admission of light, 
and from the extra labour to the insects in 
attaching their combs, and are fast giving place 
to racks of sections. Boxes about 5 in. deep and 
furnished with frames 2 in. wide, with a J or § 
space, will make fairly good supers. The combs, 
guides being of course given, will be built in the 
frames, and these can be offered separately for 
sale, when they will find purchasers much more 
readily than large supers. In fact, the large 
supers, once the pride of the beekeeper, are now 
passing out of use, except for extracting and 
returning to hive to be refilled, as they are more 
liable to breakage, and less saleable. What are 
termed sections’’ are taking their place ; these 
consist of little boxes having top sides and 
bottom only, but without back and front, like 
small but wide frames, which can be placed side 
by, side over the hive. In America these have 
been largely used, and in 1878 and 1879 nearly 
200 tons of honey came to us in this shape 
across the Atlantic, chiefly from one firm of 
honey-dealers ; and in all large English towns 
these neat little boxes of clean white honey- 
comb became a familiar sight : but they were not 
so pleasant to the taste, for those once so eager 
for American honey did not come again. These 
sections have now come into general use, and 
may be seen at all our shows, where they 
readily sell at remunerative prices. 
X.— Section Boxes. 
The ordinary section holds about 11b. of honey. 
The wood of which it is made is J of an inch 
thick ; the dimensions are 4Jin. by 4Jin. by 2in,, 
but the top and bottom pieces are only lfin. 
wide, in order to allow the bees to pass through 
the spaces left between the narrower bottoms 
when the boxes are put side by side To make 
these sections neatly is beyond the skill of moat 
people ; but they can be purchased of most 
hive-dealers so cheaply as to make substitutes 
unnecessary, their price being from Jd. to Id. 
each. They are made in one piece, and merely 
require to be folded, and the two extremities, 
fitted into each other to complete them. 
They are used both on the top of the hive as 
supers proper, and in the hive towards the side 
where honey is also stored as well as above. In 
this case a wide frame is fitted with them, and 
as the sections are filled they are removed, and 
empty ones put in their places. 
We must now explain how the secticn boxes 
are placed upon the hive. Almost every bee- 
keeper has some peculiarity in his method of 
placing his sections. A frame, termed a rack, 
should be made of wood Jin. thick, upon which 
the boxes may so rest that the bees will have an 
opportunity of running freely between them and 
their frames, the thicker pieces, about Jin. high, 
fixed upon this frame, and between which the 
sections stand, answer two purposes : first, the 
boxes, which are often fitted over the hive in 
three rows, have a space between their sides, 
which gives finger room in lifting them out, and 
next they form the resting place for the separa- 
tor, which now needs explanation. If the 
combs were not finished with perfectly flat faces, 
and with regular thickness, the comb of one box 
would intrude into another, and so prevent the 
glazing. All this is avoided by the separator, 
which may consist of tin, zinc, glass, or wood, 
placed between the rows of sections. But glass 
is too thick to be desirable. The bees work 
away from the guide or foundation given them, 
until the separator prevents further building, 
and the sealing over the comb has in conse- 
quence a perfectly flat face. Shouldithe case of 
sections not wholly cover the hive top, the open- 
ings must be closed up in some way, slips of 
carpet or wood being useful. 
As the boxes get sealed over they should be 
removed, empty ones taking their places. But 
if honey is not coming in very fast, it is better, 
after taking some completed ones from the 
centre of the rack, to fill the gaps with the half- 
finished ones from the sides, and either reducing 
the size of the rack, or filling up with empty 
boxes, as may seem most desirable. Our hints 
on “ Quieting Bees” will now be useful, and a 
goose wing or painter's dusting brush will 
quickly get rid of all the bees, especially if we 
also shake each box in the line of the comb as 
sharply as it will bear without risk. 
On obtaining supers, just three hints, upon the 
understanding of which too much stress can 
hardly be laid. 1st — You may have four hives 
no one of which is strong enough to gather 
surplus, for remember weak hives never yield 
a profit. Before the honey glut comes get 
your four lots into three, or even two, and 
boxeB filled to an extent that will surprise 
