MillerThousand AnswersBeekeepingQuestions.pdf - BioBees

aDemaree,242 DR. miller'swill be to have no swarming. Put it off just as long as you canwithout having the bees actually swarm. If you wait until cellsare started, and then operate, destroying the cells, you may feelpretty easy about swarming. Some report it a perfect preventive.You propose to put a comb-honey super under an extractingsuper.That will be all right if the extracting-combs are nice andwhite. If black from brood-rearing your sections may be blackened.Q. Will you please explain Mr. Allen's system for swarm preventionthat he gave to the readers of the Bee Journal severalyears ago? If it really has any merit, will you kindly reproduceit in the Journal?A. If you will turn to page 94 of the American Bee Journallor 1910, you will find the plan given by A. C. Allen, as follows:"When the honey-fiow is well started, I go to each strongci'lon>-, regardless of whether the bees desire to swarm or not,and remove it from its stand, putting in its place a hive filled withempty combs, less one of the center ones. Next, a comb containinga patch of unsealed brood about as large as the hand, is selectedfrom the colony and placed in the vacant place in the newhive ;queen-excluder is put on this lower story, and above thisa super of empty combs, this one having an escape hole fordrones; and on top of all, an empty super. A cloth is then nicelyp!aced in front of this new hive, on which the bees and queen areshaken from the combs of the parent hive, and the third story isfilled with the combs of sealed brood and brood too old to producequeens, and allowed to remain there and hatch, returning to theworking force.''This is really the Demaree plan, which was given to the publicmany years ago, by G. W . a prominent Kentucky beekeeperat that time. Mr. Allen has varied it by putting a framewith some brood in the lower story, whereas I think Mr. Demareehad only empty combs, or combs with starters in the lower story.Mr. Allen's variation is of value, for I think there were cases reportedin which the bees swarmed out with no brood in the lowerstury. Mr. Demaree put all the brood in the second story, whileMr. Allen puts it in the third. I don't know which is beWer.Mr. Allen says "the third story is filled with the combs ofsealed brood and brood too old to produce queens.'' I hardly understandthat, for he says nothing about putting brood elsewhere