1. The First Essential is Securing and Maintaining a Clear Brood Nest

Permit only good, all-worker combs in the brood chamber, whether it is one or two hive bodies. Eight combs, and in a two-story system of management, at least twelve combs, should be kept in condition for the queen to use. If more brood is produced than the colony needs the surplus may be used in making colonies uniform in strength, or in building up nuclei.

Particularly should brood be removed from colonies that have swarmed or that want to swarm. Nearly all the brood should be removed from a colony that has prepared to swarm, so that it may have a clear brood nest, but it is neither necessary nor desirable to shake such colonies into new brood chambers. If a colony has swarmed, the brood can be used to good advantage elsewhere.

Clear brood nest has already been defined as a brood nest of ample proportions with enough clear and usable worker cells to permit the queen to lay freely during those parts of the year when her offspring will be valuable to the operator.

When removing brood or honey from brood chambers that are becoming crowded or where preparations for swarming are underway, one or two combs of mostly sealed brood are taken out at a time and replaced with comb foundation. This is repeated every eight or ten days. Replacing full combs with empty ones seldom serves to preserve a clear brood nest, because such combs are frequently filled with honey and sealed without an egg having been laid in them. In a few locations this may occur even when foundation is used for replacement. Sealed, rather than unsealed brood is taken away where colonies are worked at intervals of eight or ten days; but if visits are less frequent, it is better practice to take unsealed brood: sealed brood would emerge in eight or ten days; while the unsealed brood, if not taken away, when sealed would occupy cells in the brood nest too long a time and thus spoil the plan for keeping a clear brood nest.

Combs of brood, removed from crowded brood nests, are often used to form nuclei, as here shown beside the full colonies from which they have been taken.

When the system of management involves only a few seasonal inspections of colonies, nearly all the brood in the brood nest may, at one operation, be separated from the queen (as in De-mareeing, ) and the queen allowed to establish a new brood nest. This is effective for swarm control and is a common practice.

It is usually preferable to leave the unsealed brood in the brood chamber where there are plenty of nurse bees; because unsealed brood is likely to die if placed where there are not enough nurse bees to care for it, and because if unsealed brood is taken away and only sealed brood remains, the colony is likely to swarm because thrown out of balance; but if sealed brood is removed, emerging bees are distributed and swarming restrained.

Combs of honey are removed from the brood nest and replaced by foundation when such manipulation is necessary to preserve a CLEAR brood nest. Different strains and races of bees vary in their behavior and are more or less likely to allow the brood nest to become honey bound. This tendency also depends on the strength and condition of the colony, and on the aptitude of some queens to go anywhere at certain times to find room to lay, while others confine their egg laying to a compact restricted area. In the latter case, the bees store honey closely around the small brood nest even though it is too small for the development of a strong colony.

This situation occurs when a queen is poor or a colony below the standard condition for the season.

Importance of Young Queens and of Queen Excuders in Maintaining a Clear Brood Nest

A young, active queen helps to keep the brood nest clear of honey since the bees readily remove honey to give her room to lay. Good young queens usually produce more brood than older ones; but even moderately good queens working under a clear brood nest system, give better results than is usual under the let alone method.

Under most conditions, with the Lang-stroth hive, except for comb honey, queen excluders are of value in maintaining a clear brood nest. Queen excluders become honey excluders only when the operator neglects to keep the brood nest clear. When excluders are used successfully, the brood nest is kept in condition by removing honey and brood, or by shifting the queen to another brood chamber when the first brood nest becomes full.

When utilizing full depth combs in extracting supers, an excluder is useful to keep the queen out of them; but when full depth or deeper combs are used in the brood chamber and shallow combs in the supers, queen excluders are not always necessary, especially if a food chamber or other shallow super, pretty well filled with honey, is kept just above the brood nest and under supers that are being filled. It is, however, not good practice to permit sealing in this shallow super before the colony is working well in several supers, because swarming may result.

If bees do not work well above a shallow super of honey, it should be removed. If the shallow super has never contained brood the queen does not go up as readily as when the combs are old and dark; but unless there is plenty of room in the brood nest, as well as some drone comb, the queen may go up if no excluder is used.

If the queen is permitted in the spring to begin laying in a shallow super or food chamber, she must not be confined there by being blocked off from a more roomy brood nest by sealed honey or otherwise, because this may force a small swarm out of the small brood nest even when there is plenty of room in the brood chamber below.

Beekeepers who maintain a clear brood nest without an excluder permit the queen to lay where she will only as long as she keeps the brood nest where they want it. They see to it that she lays where they wish the brood to be.

In producing bulk comb honey, the queen must be kept out of the supers, usually by an excluder, though it is sometimes possible to do without one just as when honey for extraction is produced in shallow supers.