ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



151 



tetween Ijrood frames will admit more 

 bees and have a tendency to prevent 

 swarming much more than one and 

 three-eighths inch, which is more 

 commonly used by bee-keepers. 



Mr. Bull — Now, in regard to handling 

 this swarming problem, at the start of 

 white clover flow is when we have the 

 most of it. If it is a bad season for 

 swarming, like last season was, I take 

 that brood away. You have all ad- 

 mitted you have to use two hive bodies 

 to accomplish that. Put that brood in 

 one story — fill up foundation with 

 comb below. Put that brood on top, 

 leave it for ten days; then go to that 

 brood, destroy all the queen cells un- 

 less you have good stock you want to 

 lear queens from. Better buy queens 

 from the south; set that hive of brood 

 off; at the end of 10 days you have 

 taken all that brood and work from 

 the old colony; they are storing honey; 

 set th«;m on the new stand and all 

 your workers go back. 



I have had colonies so set off and 

 given them a young queen before the 

 end of clover season give me 50 pounds 

 of honey. It is one thing to prevent 

 swarming and another thing to get all 

 the honey you can. 



I keep my bees in ten frame all the 

 time. 



Mr. Wilcox — ^When you put a young 

 queen in from the south, do you ever 

 have anything? Do you notice an in- 

 crease when you introduce a young 

 queen ? 



Mr. Bull — ^I put her with brood on 

 the new stand. 



Mr. "Wheeler — Is any brood con- 

 nected with the swarm? 



Mr. Bull — Simply set it on top over 

 the supers for ten days, then leave it 

 off on another part of the yard. 



Mr. Wheeler — ^You use the queen 

 excluder? 



Mr. Bull— Yes. 



You can set that brood off and make 

 a new colony and get a good crop of 

 honey from it the same year; it takes 

 probably five minutes or less to oper- 

 ate on that colony at the opening of 

 the honey flow and then you forget 

 them. 



Mr. Anguish — ^AU these things look 

 all right, but I would hate to go 

 through the work, and more than that, 

 you take Mr. Dadant's case, he has 

 got 500 colonies of bees. I suppose he 



has got all he wants; with your method 

 he would have 1,200 one year and the 

 next year 2,400. At that rate you 

 would soon have a terrible lot of bees 

 and you have a lot of work all the 

 time going on. It seems to me the 

 more you can keep bees together, es- 

 pecially in our country, keep them in 

 a body, something on Mr. Dadant's 

 plan, the more honey we can get. Our 

 seasons are short. If we were 

 stretched out over a long period it 

 would be altogether a different thing. 



Mr. Bull — About getting 1,200 or 

 2,400 colonies — ^around the fall of the 

 year after your fall honey flow, pick 

 out half your best queens and kill the 

 other. 



Dadants get what honey they can 

 with as little work as possible, and 

 some of us get all the honey we can 

 and use as much work as we can to 

 get it. 



Mr. Wheeler — Get all the honey we 

 can and do it with the least expense 

 possible; I have tried some experi- 

 ments you people have not, possibly. 



I tried an experiment on ventilation; 

 it might cost you a good many dollars 

 to do it; twenty years ago I cut down 

 a lot of eight frame Langstroth hives 

 to Heddin; I had the rims left and 

 kept them. I tried all sorts of ex- 

 periments with those rims — cross ways 

 on bottom board, gave the bees all 

 sorts of ventilation, and it had no ef- 

 fect I could see on swarming. 



I do not believe that ventilation from 

 below has much to do with it; the 

 bees are peculiar about their venti- 

 lation. 



But do not go to the expense and 

 trouble of having a lot of rims made, 

 thinking this is going to cut any ice, 

 because I do not think it will from 

 the experiments I made. 



President Miller — ^We have one or 

 two important papers coming soon; 

 whatever you have to say, make it as 

 brief as possible ; we will try to hear 

 these talks and the papers, too. 



Mr. Davis — I see there are two 

 classes of men here; one man has got 

 money and the other has got brains; 

 the man who has money can make it 

 with his money, but the man who has 

 brains has got to make it with brains 

 and labor, too. 



Therefore we take a few bees and 

 make a whole lot of bees out of them; 

 they take a whole lot of bees, make a 



