282 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING 
queen descends and occupies them with brood, while 
honey is 'carried above, and stored in the old brood- 
space — so that run or extracted honey is, after all, 
alone produced. In the Simmins system the new 
combs are not for the queen, but are carried aloft, as 
we just now said, to the sections, so that they may 
naturally receive the honey. Curiously, by this device, 
the bees build combs for brood, and then store them 
with nectar ; while, stranger still, as most would regard 
it, the bees are, by giving combs in their sections, so 
encouraged in storing that they there complete the 
comb honey, and leave comb-building near the entrance 
comparatively neglected. Further details it would be 
premature here to consider will come before us in 
a subsequent chapter. 
This system has not been sufficiently long before 
the bee-keeping world to have permitted of a practi- 
cal test so thorough as its author has no doubt given 
it before he ventured to speak so positively in its 
favour ; but, judged by the light of theory and old 
experience, as I have endeavoured now to do, it 
promises great things to those raisers of comb honey 
who will carefully follow it. 
In a state of nature, the swarming instinct is an 
essential to the maintenance of bee-life. Under 
domestication this is no longer true ; so that we may 
safely ‘seek to eliminate the instinct, and so not only 
come to possess a non-swarming system, but a non- 
swarming bee. The method of operation is purely a 
question of queen-raising, which must next engage 
our attention. 
