How to Draw Brood.
It will be understood that we keep some out yards to draw brood from to keep up the nuclei in the queen-rearing yards. We injured some colonies very much by injudicious drawing of brood. If we do not wish to run the colonies down to nothing, we should mark X on the top-bars of two or three brood-frames, and do not take them when we are drawing brood. I find that two Langstroth frames in the center of the brood-nest will keep the colony up pretty well, but three are better—that leaves about three frames to draw on, when 8-frame hives are used, as the two outside combs seldom have brood, or not as much as the center ones.
The best plan to control an apiary that persists in swarming, is to draw brood from it and recruit or build nuclei with the brood. It would likely astonish any one to know how much brood can be drawn from a good queen during the season. I am satisfied that we have drawn as much as 50 frames of brood from a single colony during one season of eight to ten months, and then get some honey, and have a fine colony for winter in the colony we draw from. But if we draw at random, and take any and all the frames, we are likely to ruin the colonies.
Jennie Atchley.
Honey as Food and Medicine is just the thing to help sell honey, as it shows the various ways in which honey may be used as a food and as a medicine. Try 100 copies of it, and see what good "salesmen" they are. See the third page of this number of the Bee Journal for description and prices.
