ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



125 



To Prevent Swarming? 



""WTiich is the best to prevent 

 swarming — room above or room be- 

 low?" 



Mr. Bull — The surest way to prevent 

 swarming is to take one frame of 

 brood with queen and balance of hive 

 full of full sheets of foundation and 

 shake the bees below. Then put on 

 an excluder with supers on top and 

 brood on top of all. 



Mr. Cadant — That is a room below, 

 then? 



Mr. Bull — Yes, a room below. 



Mr. Pyles — Will that prohibit 

 swarming at all times? When the 

 bees have got the swarming fever? 



Mr. Bull — I have taken colonies with 

 cells sealed ready to swarm and given 

 them that treatment and they have 

 never made any effort to swarm. 



Pres. Huffman — Do you place the 

 queen excluder between the two colo- 

 nies? 



Mr. Bull — Certainly. 



Mr. Dadant — And one frame of brood 

 in the lower story? 



Mr. Bull— Yes. 



Mr. Pyles — I presume Mr. Bull is an 

 extracted honey producer; he would 

 not guarantee that in comb honey 

 production. 



Mr. Cavanagh — You can work that 

 in comb honey production if you put 

 the brood above the comb honey 

 supers and form an auxiliary passage. 

 It has been written up in Gleanings; 

 that plan will work in coonb honey 

 production; I have tried it to a limited 

 extent; it means taking the brood 

 away from us. 



Mr. Pyles — I believe the bulletin of 

 the Government about it says you will 

 have to go through and cut out the 

 queen cells or the young queen will be 

 reared and then you have trouble; 

 whenever you have a young queen and 

 even an excluder above, you have 

 trouble. If they have made up their 

 minds to swarm, the bees are not 

 going to make any preparation for her 

 to lay below. There is no infallible 

 rule except to remove all brood and 

 set it away on different foundation. 

 If the queen for any cause has a ten- 

 dency toward failing that rule is not 

 infallible, if honey is coming in right. 



Mr. Bull — I want to make an in- 

 crease instead of setting the brood on 

 top I set them on new stand. I had 

 plenty of swarming, believe me, not 

 once, but three or four times. 



Pres. HufEman — I think it depends 

 upon what kind of honey you are run- 

 nig for, coimb or extracted. Mr. Pyles 

 is a comb hoey man and Mr. Bull runs 

 for extracted; we have' a man^I pre- 

 sume he is one of the largest pro- 

 ducers in the northwest or in the 

 central part of the states — Mr. Huff- 

 man, of Janesville, Minnesota. In the 

 spring of the year, the first thing he 

 does, before the honey season com- 

 mences, he wraps his swarms with 

 heavy express paper and as soon as 

 the swarm gets strong he lifts hive 

 with brood on top of a hive full of 

 empty combs and the swarm can work 

 below in empty combs; as soon as 

 they are full of brood he puts a queen 

 excluding honey board over the lower 

 story with queen in same hive. Then 

 he puts super on top and he says he 

 invariably has no swarming. 



He told me last fall, in Minneapolis, 

 (a poor season) he had over 50,000 

 lbs. of honey. 



Mr. Cavanagh — The gentleman may 

 think the brood all hatches, but I 

 differ with him; the brood does not 

 all hatch. If he puts that brood nest 

 separated by queen excluder and 

 empty set of combs, it has been 

 demonstrated that that brood is large- 

 ly cleaned out. 



Mr. Huffman — He lets the lower hive 

 fill up with brood before he puts on 

 the queen excluder; when he gets the 

 lower one full of brood, then he places 

 the queen excluder; and works them 

 down instead of up, and this has a 

 tendency to protect the brood, for the 

 reason that heat goes up and you have 

 the heat where you want it. 



Mr. Cavanagh — That is diflferent. 



Mr. Stockdale — Why not leave two 

 hives there the year round? 



Pres. Huffman — They don't want to 

 handle two instead of one in that 

 Northern country. 



A member — That extra 50 pounds of 

 honey is not in the lower hive at the 

 end of the season; there is 50 or 75 

 or 100 above the excluder. I had twenty 

 colonies run that way. They averaged 

 over 100 pounds of extracted above in 

 this poor country here, and did not 

 have over 50 pounds below the excluder 

 at' the end of the season. 



There was the equivalent of pretty 

 close to 15 or 18 frames of brood there 

 all through the season, up to the first 

 of September. 



Mr. Bull — That is not what we want 



