Mar. 31, 1904. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



247 



drawn out to full thickness, receive a comb-leveler treat- 

 ment, after which they are again placed in supers and set 

 out-doors to be cleaned out by the bees. To be on the safe 

 side and excite the bees as little as possible, I always have 

 an empty hive placed a little way from the apiary, on which 

 I set these so-prepared supers, frequently a half-dozen at a 

 time. The hive-entrance is reduced to nearly single-bee 

 passage ; this has a tendency to prevent the bees Ifrom 

 gnawing and tearing down the combs, and the cleaning out 

 is done in a more quiet way. I have never had any case of 

 robbing caused by this procedure. As soon as the bees stop 

 flying to this hive, the sections are all cleaned out and 

 ready for storage. 



When the honey-house, shop, or whatever place these 

 sections are stored in is used as a work-shop during the win- 

 ter, more or less dust is the natural consequence. To pro- 

 tect them and keep them as clean as possible, all supers 

 containing them should be stacked up in snug, tight piles, 

 and the top-ones covered up, the nearer dust-proof the bet- 

 ter ; and this holds good with all the empty supers, as well 

 as with those that have been refilled with new sections. 



In connection with the foregoing, the question may be 

 asked : What part of the honey-crop is due to bait-sections ? 

 As it is impossible to use and not use bait-sections with 

 any number of colonies at the same time, the question can 

 not be answered even approximately. To test the matter in 

 different seasons, or with different colonies — that is, use 

 bait-sections one year and none the next, or set aside an 

 equal number of ic every respect equal colonies, with and 

 without them — would not give reliable results, for we all 

 know that all colonies under apparently the same condition 

 will not always work alike. But one thing we are sure of : 

 At the last gathering of our supers we have repeatedly 

 found some, especially in seasons of light honey-flows, that 

 had all their inserted bait-combs transformed into finished 

 honey, while the rest that had only foundation starters 

 large or small, had not been touched at all, and this can 

 only be attributed to the use of bait-sections. 



There is still another point, which I wish to mention : 

 No matter how thorough and painstaking we have been in the 

 spring management of our colonies, there are always some 

 that are rather slow to take to their sections when the honey- 

 flow begins. Knowing that it is the early start that counts 

 at the end, I have many times induced these less ambitious 

 colonies to make a start by exchanging their empty bait- 

 sections with those already filled from more industrious 

 ones. Like changing from the middle to the side rows, 

 as spoken of above, it is desirable and necessary to move as 

 many adhering bees as possible with the sections, and the 

 less smoke we use the less our bees are excited, and the 

 better we will succeed in this operation. 



A drawing and description of my comb-leveler I will 

 furnish later on. Niagara Co., N. Y. 



" Keep More Bees"— Is this Doctrine the 

 Correct One ? 



BY G. M. DOOI,ITTLE. 



ON page 99, I find these words : "In place of spreading 

 brood and stimulative feeding in spring to increase the 

 number of bees, E. D. Townsend says in the Bee-Keep- 

 ers' Review, that it is better to have a few more colonies 

 and avoid the extra work. The point is worth considering." 



That " the point is worth considering" is what leads 

 me to say something on this matter, for I believe there is 

 an element in it which the advocates of such a doctrine have 

 not take into consideration. This idea of Mr. Townsend is 

 not entirely new, for I have noticed for some time that the 

 idea was obtaining with some bee-keepers that more money 

 is to be made from the apiary by keeping a large number 

 of colonies and letting them largely take care of themselves, 

 than there is by keeping a less number and properly caring 

 for them. 



Not long ago I received a letter from one of our apiar- 

 ists, who said he that he was going to keep more bees than 

 he had formerly kept, and do less work with them, for he be- 

 lieved that double the number of colonies would give him 

 fully as much, if not more, honey than he had been get- 

 ting, even if he did not manipulate them at all. He said 

 that he believed the syster 'f management used by many 

 in securing large yields • om individual colonies caused a 

 greater amount of labor nd manipulation than there was 

 any use of, and henceforth e should adopt exactly the re- 

 verse from the plans he ha : formerly been using, and put 



more bees into his field, so that he would get the same 

 amount of surplus as before with very little labor. All that 

 would be required would be the investing of a little more 

 capital in shape of hives, etc., and that the "good manage- 

 ment plan " would soon be a thing of the past. I have not 

 given the exact words of the letter, but I have given the 

 substance, very nearly, if not quite. 



The reader will at once sec the sentiment of this letter 

 is nearly, if not quite, identical with that expressed in the 

 quotation from Mr. Townsend at the beginning of this arti- 

 cle. As these views come from persons of no mean degree 

 in bee-keeping, it behooves us to consider the matter very 

 carefully, as Editor York suggests, and if those of the past 

 have been on the wrong track, to get over on the right one 

 as soon as may be. 



After carefully looking the matter over, and experiment- 

 ing to quite a large extent for the past few years, I believe 

 that there is one item at least, regarding these extra colo- 

 nies, which the advocates of putting more colonies into the 

 field forget, or one entirely ignorant of, the same being 

 great enough more than to pay for the extra manipulation 

 they seem so anxious to get around, so that the investing of 

 capital in more hives for the extra number is worse than 

 thrown away. 



The item I allude to is that each of the extra colonies 

 put in the field in order to secure the honey-secretion from 

 a given area with but little or no manipulation, or to "avoid 

 the extra work," as Mr. Townsend is quoted as saying, costs 

 quite a large proportion of the product of our field ; and if 

 we carry the matter far enough along this direction of put- 

 ting in a "few more colonies," it will cost us a// of our 

 product, except in the most favorable years. 



Not long ago I saw a statement in print from quite a 

 noted bee-keeper, that it took 200 pounds of honey to carry 

 a colony of bees through a single year. This is a greater 

 consumption of stores during the year than I had believed 

 possible. My estimate has been that 100 pounds is sufficient 

 for all the needs of any single colony during a year, and so 

 to be on the conservative side I will call my estimate, or 

 half of what the writer gave, as the amount needed to keep 

 one colony of bees one year, as the right amount. Then 

 the question which comes to us is this : Which is the 

 cheaper, a little extra manipulation, or the extra colonies, 

 hives, etc., and the }ioney that they consume ? 



Suppose that 100 colonies produce an average yield of SO 

 pounds each of surplus honey for their keeper, and by so do- 

 ing secure all the nectar in a given field, year by year. 

 This will make SOOO pounds of surplus as the apiarist's 

 share of the field, while each of the 100 colonies will use 100 

 pounds each, or 10,000 pounds as a whole, as their share to 

 carry them through the year. Thus we fail to secure to our- 

 selves only a one-third share of the honey from our field, by 

 employing an extra number of colonies. 



On the other hand, if we employ the management or 

 economy plan, which many of our best farmers do, and the 

 plan adopted almost universally by our English friends— 

 that of securing the same amount of produce off of one acre 

 of land that many of our Americans do from three or four 

 acres — we shall find our question stated thus : 15,000 pounds 

 is the product of our field ; 50 colonies are all that are needed 

 with good management to secure this whole yield. 

 Then 50 colonies must use SOOO pounds of this for their 

 support, thus leaving 10,000 pounds for the manager. 

 None but the most prejudiced can help seeing from this 

 that the manager gets 5000 pounds of honey for his manip- 

 ulation, and uses little if any more time than he would use 

 on the 100 without manipulation : hence from the standpoint 

 of overstocking a field, the management plan is 5,000 pounds 

 ahead of the other plan of keeping an extra number of 

 colonies, and proves that Mr. Townsend's doctrine is not 

 correct. 



And the same holds good, be the number kept great or 

 small. A man can care for one-half the number of colonies 

 on the management plan as easily (according to my way 

 of thinking) as he can for double the number as proposed 

 by my correspondent, and Mr. Townsend ; and this one- 

 half will give the apiarist better results in dollars and cents 

 than will the whole cared 'for in the slip-shod way that colo- 

 nies are generally cared for when worked on the "let-alone " 

 plan, and save the extra honey consumed by the 

 extra one-half of the number of bees, as clean gain to 

 the bee-keeper. All of the work done with the "larger 

 number of colonies " is the liardfr part of bee-keeping, such 

 as carrying the hives and colonics to and from the cellar, 

 moving them to out-apiaries, ete.; while the manipulating 

 part is of an easier nature. 



Just compare sitting beside any colony and handling 



