432 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CtJLTUEE. 



Sep±. 



permanent bottoms. Although other hives 

 admit of tiering up, I do not remember hav- 

 ing seen a hive before tlie Simplicity came 

 out, that could be thus tiered up, and still, 

 not permit the rain to beat in at the joints ;' 

 nor do I remember to have seen a hive that 

 was made of just two different pieces, bodies 

 and covers, the covers being either cover or 

 bottom interchangeably, and fitting as a cov- 

 er, so as to exchide the rain. The principal 

 point I meant to make was, that although 

 permanent bottom-boards have obvious ad- 

 vantages, taking it all together we could 

 hardly afford to use them. Am I right in 

 thinking friend Carroll could hardly have 

 achieved this very great result without any 

 swarming, in any other form of hiveV In re- 

 gard to Ga-llup's great yield, we find on page 

 you refer to, of A. B. j.^ the following :— 



In thii'ty days I obtained -from the hive 50 gallons 

 of excellent thick honey (a gallon will weigh 13 lbs.). 

 An average of 20 lbs. per da.v for 30 days in succes- 

 sion is not bad for one swarm of bees. I took 5V4 

 gallons from that hive the first week in September, 

 and have at least six gallons more in the hive, over 

 and above what will be required for wintering the 

 swarm. 



Orchard, la., Dec, 1871. E. Ga.li.up. 



DRONES AND DRONE-TRAPS. 



WHAT SHALL WK DO WITH UNDESIRABLE DRONES? 



^iHE late discussion of the ' dollar-queen trafllc" 

 has made quite prominent the idea of improv- 

 ing the quality of our queens by exercising 

 greater care about the kind of drones we allow to be 

 raised in our apiaries. Theorists may write and 

 plan about building up special strains of bees vast- 

 ly superior to any we now have, but all said and 

 done will remain theory onlj' until some practical 

 plan is devised by which the raising, or, if raised, the 

 flying of undesirable drones can be certainly and ab- 

 solutely prevented. Methods are already known 

 and practiced by which this is done in small experi- 

 mental apiaries; but it is a vastly bigger job when at- 

 tempted in a large apiary run for honey. Of course, 

 the raising of drones can be very much restricted by 

 using only worker comb or foundation, but that 

 isn't enough; the restriction must be absolute. I 

 think what Mr. Hasty says on page 179, July No. of 

 the Exchayige, is directly to the point. 



I have thought this matter over more or less dur- 

 ing the past two or three years, and have come to 

 the conclusion that there are but two practicable 

 methods by which we can accomplish this work. 

 The first and only way yet successful is the one 

 used by our good friend Jones — that of having our 

 queen-breeding establishments on isolated islands; 

 but it is utterly out of the question for the majority 

 of us to even think of using this method. The only 

 other method that it seems to me can be made 

 practical is to invent some kind of a drone-trap that 

 will absolutely prevent the escape of a single drone 

 from any hive to which the trap may be attached, 

 and yet be free from those serious objections pres- 

 ent with every trap I have yet seen. 



At the National Convention held in Cleveland, in 

 1871, a Mrs. Farnham exhibited a non-swarming ar- 

 rangement, to which was a drone-trap iacidentally 

 attached. This would, without doubt, trap every 

 drone attempting to leave the hive; but it had too 

 many objectionable features to be practical. 1. It v/as 



a queen-trap also, which is a fatal objection, as old 

 queens are liable to be superseded, and young ones 

 fly out for fertilization, at any time; and any thing 

 that will prevent that is not to be thought of for a 

 moment; 2. To be eEfective, the trap had to be look- 

 ed to every daj- while the drones were trying to fly. 

 This takes more time than the most of us can af- 

 ford; 3. It was too complicated and expensive; 4. It 

 seriously interfered with the bees carrying dead 

 bees and drones out of the hive. 



The drone-excluder described by Mr. Jones at the 

 convention last fall, and also in the April No. of 

 Gleanings, remedies some of these objectiong, but 

 not all; and I certainly think you were mistaken in 

 your answer to Mr. Newton, on page 3S7, August 

 Gleanings. If one wishes to get rid of bad drones 

 out of a dozen or so colonics only, your plan will 

 work, if practiced once every three or four weeks; 

 but how will it be if one wants to operate on three- 

 foiu-ths to niue-tcnths of all the colonies in a large 

 apiary, as I do? You can readily see that it is im- 

 possible for me to spend the time for that; besides, 

 to be effective it would sometimes have to be done 

 when robbers were around, and I have no idea that 

 any bee-keeper would attempt the second time to 

 shake the bees off from the combs of 150 colonies 

 with a mess of robbers looking on. This suggests 

 another objection to all drone traps or excluders, 

 which must be overcome before they will be ef- 

 fective; viz., preventing the queen from regaining 

 her hive when she is shaken from the combs with 

 the other bees while extracting. 



Now, friend Root, yourself as well as others seem 

 to look on this drone question as though the few 

 black or hybrid drones we may happen to have in 

 our apiaries were tha only fellows that need squelch- 

 ing; but it seems to me as though it should be look- 

 ed at in a far broader sense than that. It isn't 

 enough that our bees be all Italians; theymust be 

 the best Italians; and to be that, we must obtain the 

 fathers as well as the mothers of our working bees 

 from a few of our best colonies; and some effective, 

 practical method of doing that is just what I want. 

 Friend Cook suggests that we pinch off the heads of 

 every queen we raise, not up to our highest stand- 

 ard. This would be all right if it were not that it 

 would cost us our income from our bees. Can not 

 some inventive genius, yourself for instance, give 

 us some cheap, practical device, free from the ob- 

 jections I have enumerated? Perhaps some modifi- 

 cations of friend Newton's device may answer, even 

 if it is an old one. 



I spent one rainy forenoon in experimenting. I 

 made a Jones excluder, only wider than he uses 

 them, say 2 or 3 inches Wide; made a hole about ^i 

 by 1 inch in top of this. I made a box, about the 

 size and shape of a quart oyster-can, out of same 

 material the excluder was made of, with bottom, 

 but no top. In the bottom I made a hole the same 

 size as the one in the excluder, into which I soldered 

 a tube of tinned wire cloth, with the upper end 

 raveled out an inch or so. I set this box (or, rather, 

 trap) on the excluder in front of a hive, so that drones 

 could pass up through the hole in the excluder, into 

 the trap through the tube of wire cloth, the raveled 

 ends of the later preventing their returning. I used 

 a loose piece of the perforated zinc to cover the 

 trap. I watched this for a few days, and am satis- 

 fied that, if I had the proper material and plenty of 

 time, I could make a cheap, effective drone-trap, 

 free from all, or nearly all, of the objections noted. 



J 



