To use shallow food chambers successfully with Langstroth hives is one of the difficult problems of beekeeping, and perhaps the best way has not yet been found; but the use of the one-story clear brood nest system, particularly with the large Modified Dadant brood chamber, which uses shallow supers as standard equipment, presents a good solution.

In an experience which G. H. Cale and I shared in operating a neglected fifty-colony apiary near Washington, D. C., while we were employed in the Federal Bee Culture Laboratory, we found many colonies swarming, or preparing to swarm from a small brood nest in a shallow food chamber without even having established a brood nest in the larger brood chamber below. We hurriedly placed the shallow food chambers under the brood chambers after cutting queen cells, and the swarming ceased.

Unseasonal spring swarming is encountered in the use of shallow food chambers by those who consistently have small colonies, particularly with the smaller brood chambers; and it is especially troublesome in localities and conditions which cause the small win-tered-over colony to consume all stores in the brood chamber and establish its spring brood nest in the shallow food chamber where only a little honey and stored pollen remains. Then incoming nectar is stored in the food chamber and it becomes crowded so that the queen has no more room to lay, and the colony is still too small to descend and start a brood nest in the cold brood chamber. Reversing the two stories permits the queen to go upward into the now warmer brood chamber. However, but little of this trouble is likely to occur if the shallow food chamber is filled to the bottom bars with sealed honey and if the brood chamber contains enough honey to carry the colony through the winter and until the brood nest is established in its proper place in the brood chamber.

In California I had previously experienced the premature swarming of small colonies, both from shallow food chambers and from standard brood chambers, when they had reached a honey-bound condition before the colonies became populous and of standard honey-storing strength.

At one time I moved one hundred weak colonies to a flow from vegetables grown for seed, particularly onions, expecting them to build up for a later flow, and supplied them with shallow supers because they were too weak to use full depth ones. Unfortunately, I left them alone too long. Only a few of these colonies began storing in the supers before they made preparation to swarm. To check this, I extracted all the honey and nectar possible so as to give them a clear brood nest and then watched them closely. With no attention from me, a few of the stronger colonies stored honey in the shallow super combs and filled the brood chamber with brood as I hoped all of them would.

These latter colonies were of standard honey-storing strength at the right time, while the weaker colonies required more of my time and then did not make a crop.

Summing up what I have seen and experienced, one who uses shallow food chambers should have a locality and system of management whereby strong colonies both spring and fall are the rule and not the exception. He can have such colonies through the use of the clear brood nest method adjusted to suit his conditions. A sufficiently large brood chamber is necessary, and for this the Modified Dadant hive is ideal.

These colonies when in standard spring condition will occupy more than a shallow food chamber and can readily establish a brood nest in the brood chambers while there is still too much honey in the food chamber to permit them to begin the brood nest there.

If there is a good spring nectar flow with plenty of pollen, the refilled food chamber probably will contain much stored pollen besides the honey, and will be an admirable food supply for the following spring.

Then the question arises: What is to be done with these filled food chambers while other supers are on t he hives? Several plans are available and the beekeeper should adopt the one which, by judgment and then by trial, he finds best for his locality and his particular system of beekeeping.

Under the heading "Importance of young queens (p. 41) and of queen excluders in maintaining a clear brood nest, " I have referred to the use of a food chamber or other shallow super, but something additional may be said.

Under conditions where top-supering is satisfactory, as it often is, the shallow super may remain all season, immediately above the brood chamber, particularly if shallow supers are used to store the crop of honey, and it will then often serve as a queen excluder. It should, however, be full of sealed honey. Plenty of super room should be given the colony before the bees have begun to seal honey in the food chamber.

If, however, the supers are given too late, or if for any other reason the colonies do not at once begin storing in the supers, the food chamber must either be

(1) placed under the brood chamber;

(2) be moved to the top of the pile of supers; (3) be removed entirely and placed on some weaker colony where several food chambers may be stacked on top of each other, out of the way until the honeyflow is over; or (4) be used, if it contains brood, in requeening the parent colony.