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ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



79 



were beneficial because the colonies 

 having many drones swarmed readily. 

 Swarming was then considered a de- 

 sirable thing-, since dividing or artifi- 

 cial increase was not thought of. The 

 excess of drones does indeed promote 

 swarming. Those big, noisy fellows 

 remain in the hive, in the way, all day 

 long, except for a fiight during the 

 warmest hours, being then still more 

 in the way of the active workers. No 

 doubt, as Dr. Brunnich says, there is 

 a certain fondness for the drones or 

 males, on the part of the workers, dur- 

 ing the crop, which changes to hate 

 when the crop is ended, and they con- 

 sume the hard-earned stores. But 

 they are at all times much in their 

 way. In a state of nature, according 

 to the best authorities, the bees build 

 from one -seventh to one- tenth of their 

 combs of drone size, in the brood- 

 chamber. If onlj' one-twentieth of the 

 combs of a normal colony were filled 

 with drone brood, this would still sup- 

 ply nearly 2,500 drones per colony. "We 

 should permit only our very best colo- 

 nies, and only two or three of these, to 

 raise such a large number of males, as 

 5,000 to 10,000 drones are ample for 

 any apiary. The other colonies may 

 be deprived of their drones as nearly 

 as possible, for it is probably impos- 

 sible to entirely prevent the rearing of 

 any drones. But from 100 to 300 of 

 these useless consumers per colony will 

 be of small importance. It is not only 

 necessary to remove the drone -comb, 

 early in the season, it is also indispen- 

 sable to replace it with worker comb 

 at once, for the bees will almost in- 

 variably replace drone comb in the 

 same spot, if left to their own ways. 



It has often been stated that bees 

 will tear down worker comb to build 

 drone comb. This, I believe, is an 

 error of observation. Four different 

 experiments, to my knowledge, have 

 tried the hiving of swarms on a hive 

 full of drone comb. In each of these 

 instances the bees have followed the 

 same method. After some hesitancy, 

 they did not tear down the comb to 

 rebuild it, as might have been ex- 

 pected, but simply narrowed the mouth 

 of the cells to worker size, and the 

 queen laid worker eggs in them. Is it 

 not probable that, if the bees were 

 prone to tear down one kind of comb 

 to rebuild in another, they would have 

 done it in these four cases? The 



names of the experimenters who tried 

 this are T. W. Cowan, editor of the 

 British Bee Journal; E. Drory, of Bor- 

 deaux, former editor of the Rucher Du 

 Sud-Ouest: Dr. Brunnich, of Switzer- 

 land, and myself. 



There are instances, however, of 

 bees building drone comb on worker 

 foundation. They are rare, and are 

 usually due to some defect of the foun- 

 dation, which may have been stretched 

 accidentally in the laminating, so as to 

 widen the cells. Mr. Crane, of Ver- 

 mont, mentioned to me having had 

 a dozen sheets of foundation thus 

 changed out of some 2,000 sheets of 

 this inaterial during the past summer. 

 Thesfe are only accidents. 



When we replace the drone comb 

 with worker comb, we do away with 

 undesirable drones, for the mating of 

 the queens. We save food which would 

 otherwise be wasted, since the drone 

 costs at least one-half more to rear 

 than the worker, and has to be fed as 

 long as he lives. Beheading drones in 

 the breeding cells is a waste, for the 

 queen will again lay drone eggs in those 

 cells. But the worst method of drone 

 prevention is the using of drone traps, 

 which hinder the workers more than 

 the drones would. Replace your drone 

 combs with worker combs in the brood 

 chamber early in the season, or let the 

 drones alone, after they have been 

 reared. 



7. The seventh and last of what I 

 consider the requirements for the pre- 

 vention of swarming is the spacing of 

 the frames of the brood chamber 1^^ 

 inches from center to center, instead 

 of the usual spacing of 1% inches. The 

 bees work as satisfactorily in combs 

 spaced 1% inches as in those with the 

 narrower spacing. But there is a 

 greater comfort for them in the wider 

 spacing, which adds a total of about 

 160 cubic inches to the narrow breath- 

 ing and habitable space of an 8 -frame 

 brood chamber. Think of the large 

 number of bees which may be accom- 

 modated in such a space. 



The standard hives of the present 

 day are nearly all of the narrower kind. 

 Nevertheless, the broader spacing is 

 much the better, both for prevention 

 of swarming and for clustering in the 

 winter, since more bees can hang be- 

 tween the brood combs. My attention 

 was called to the former advantage 

 during the past summer, by Mr. Allen 



