318 
EXTRACTING 
the upper and lower stories, putting the 
queen below. See Demaree Plan under 
the head of Swarming. 
There are some who claim that it is not 
necessary to use queen-excluding honey- 
boards between brood-chambers and su¬ 
pers; but the author advises that, whether 
the brood-chamber is one story or two 
stories, it be separated from the supers 
above by a queen-excluder, for otherwise 
the queen is likely to go up into the ex- 
tracting-combs, and, instead of nice white 
honeycomb, there will be a mixture of 
brood in all stages, pollen, drone, and pos¬ 
sibly queen-cells. By special management 
the queen may be kept out of the supers 
after the flow begins, even tho no excluders 
are used; but ninety-nine out of one hun¬ 
dred who attempt this will fail. It is not 
necessary to state that honey extracted from 
combs containing unsealed brood is not as 
nice for table use. Furthermore, the queen, 
if allowed in the supers, will be in a most 
Fig. 4. Seven-wire and wood queen-excluding 
honey-board. 
dangerous position, and every time the ex- 
tracting-combs are handled will stand a 
chance of being killed. It is also a very dif¬ 
ficult matter to find a queen if no excluder 
is used, for there would be so many more 
combs to look over. This would also be true 
in reference to the finding of queen-cells at 
swarming time. 
One of the greatest objections to the 
non-use of the queen-excluders is that it 
is impossible to remove bees from a super 
by means of a bee-escape, if the super 
contains brood. It is plain to see, that, if 
there is any brood in the supers, the bees 
will not desert it and go down below. On 
one occasion, when in the height of ex¬ 
tracting, a queen and her attendants were 
placidly located on a large comb of honey, 
apparently taking in the situation. The 
colony had had no queen-excluder over the 
brood-chamber and the queen was in the 
super when the escape was put on. It was 
next to impossible to tell to what hive she 
belonged, and the whole proceeding meant 
extra work and worry that would have paid 
for many excluders. 
The objection that used to be made by 
some to the use of queen-excluders was that 
they obstructed the passage of the bees into 
the supers, but with the new wood-wire 
construction this is entirely obviated. 
As soon as the first super is filled and 
the process of sealing has begun, remove 
it, put an empty one in its place, and over 
it put the nearly completed one. The col¬ 
ony will then be occupying a hive of three 
stories, in case full-depth supers are used, 
or approximately two stories, if the shal¬ 
low supers are used. Put the empty super 
nearest the brood-nest, as the bees start to 
work in it more readily; and, as it is 
nearer, they have a shorter distance to 
travel. After the first extracting the emp¬ 
ty combs can be put back again and it will 
be found that the filling and sealing are 
done much more rapidly the second time, as 
the combs are already drawn out and the 
bees do not have to waste any time in comb¬ 
building. 
Mention has been made of the advisa¬ 
bility of spacing the combs further apart 
in the supers than in the brood-chambers, 
on account of the greater eas,e in uncap¬ 
ping the thick comb. Ordinarily, eight 
combs should be placed in a ten-comb 
super, the space between being regulated 
so that it is just the same. If this is not 
done, a part of the combs will be no 
thicker than ordinary brood-combs while 
others will be entirely too thick, or else 
the bees may possibly build natural combs 
in between the frames. Let no one get 
the idea that, in order to space frames fur¬ 
ther apart, non-spacing frames should be 
used, for the regular Hoffman frame is the 
best under all conditions. The point is 
that it is very important to have uniform 
equipment. It does not pay to have spe¬ 
cial frames for extracting, for in the fall 
and in the spring it is desirable to have 
such frames spaced the regulation distance 
