HIVES. 



24b 



HIVES. 



soineliow afterward control the after - 

 swarms, arsuiiif? that more actual comb 

 honey will be produced from the parent col- 

 ony and its swarm than where other meth- 

 ods are employed. But if swarming is to be 

 allowed, what is to be done at outyards ? If 

 an attendant has to be constantly on liand 

 during the swarming part of the day, it 

 means a big expense, and this might, in a 

 l)oor season, balance the entire proceeds of 

 the honey crop. If, on the other hand, 

 swarms are allowed to go to the woods, then 

 there is a loss. It is true that swarms will 

 not escape if the queens' wings are clipped ; 

 and to a very great extent clipping does pre- 

 vent this waste.* But better— far better- 

 is it to take away the desire for swarming 

 altogether, if it can be done. In the produc- 

 tion of extracted honey, at least, the Da- 

 dants have demonstrated that, witli their 

 large hives, tliey have practical control of 

 swarming, because their hives are so large 

 that the bees and the queens rarely feel 

 cramped for room. But Mr. Dadant argues 

 that he would use large hives, even if he 

 were running for comb honey ; for with a 

 division - board he can reduce the brood- 

 chamber to any size desired. And then when 

 he has a prolific queen that can fill a whole 

 C^uinby hive he is that much ahead, because 

 the colony has more working bees to its size 

 than a smaller one ; and there is no use in 

 denying the fact that tliese jumbo colonies 

 have a certain vim and energy— a day-aftei- 

 day " stick-to-it-iveness " — that we do not 

 tind in the smaller ones. Personally we be- 

 lieve in large colonies; and we are hopeful 

 that the time will soon come when we shall 

 learn how to make these big colonies produce 

 comb honey as well as, at the same time, re- 

 maining practically n(m-swarmers. At the 

 present time (.January, 1910) shallow hives, 

 Langstroth or Danzenbaker, liave the gen- 

 eral preference for comb honey throughout 

 nearly all the territory in the northern por- 

 tion of the country— the territory where the 

 main honey supply is almost entirely from 

 clover and bass wood. 



LARGE COLONIES IN TWO - STORY EIGHT- 

 FRAME LANGSTROTH HIVES. 



We have experimented a little with two 

 colonies in eight-frame Langstroth hives 

 tiered one above another, raising brood in 

 both bodies. When we liave a good queen, 

 such colonies in these double cliambers grow 



* See CLiPPiN(i Queens' Wings to Prevent 

 SwARMiNQ, under head of Queens; also Swarming. 



to be tremendously strong, and they show less 

 inclination to swarm— no sort of doubt about 

 tliat ; and, what is more, in a few instances 

 we have placed comb-honey supers on top of 

 these same colonies, and had them fill two 

 and three supers. But in a majority of cases 

 the colonies will not be strong enough to till 

 two stories and go into the supers besides ; 

 so, after getting the colonies up to good 

 strength, and just at tlie approach of or dur- 

 ing the honey-flow, we take away one story 

 and place on one or two comb-lioney supers. 

 Such a large force of bees, of course, rush 

 right into them ; tlien if there is any honey 

 in the fields the supers are filled and com- 

 pleted in short order. We have thus far suc- 

 ceeded in getting stronger colonies in this 

 way than in a single eight-frame brood-nest 

 alone. By thus breeding in double stories, 

 and having prolific queens, or, perhaps, what 

 may be better, working colonies on one 

 eight-frame fuU-deptli story, and one eight- 

 frame half -depth story, we can get the bees 

 into the sections at once. For particulars 

 regarding this last, see the Barber plan 

 spoken of under CoMi? Honey. 



OBJECTIONS TO LARGE HIVES. 



Their size renders them l)oth heavy and 

 unwieldy. They cost more money — about 

 twice as much if made as sliown in the en- 

 graving of the Dadant hive. It is difflcidt, 

 in the first place, to get good clear lumber 

 wide enough to make these deep hives ; and 

 then when they are made, and are full of 

 bees and honey, it is not practical to move 

 them about much. The Dadants, for in- 

 stance, leave these large hives on their 

 stands all summer and winter, both at the 

 home and out yards. They find it more 

 practical to do so. Even wlien wintered on 

 their summer stands in single-walled hives, 

 the loss, we understand, just about equals 

 the slight increase they have in swarming. 



These large frames are not nearly as easy 

 to manipulate as the shallow Langstroth. It 

 takes longer to get them out of the hive, and 

 during the operation there is more danger 

 of killing bees. The Dadants and others 

 having the Quinby hive find it necessary to 

 use anotlier size that they call their shallow 

 or lialf-deptli frame, 5fxl8+, for extracting. 

 These are placed on toj) of the brood-nest, 

 and are tiered up one, two, three, or four 

 high. One is led to wonder why a compro- 

 mise between a deep Quinby and these ex- 

 tracting- frames would not be better — a 

 frame adapted for breeding as well as for 

 extracting — as, for instance, one like the 

 Langstroth : theji when one wants a large 



