614 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Sept. 8, 1904. 



lure a little higher, generally up to from 94 to 96 degrees, 

 during any time when they are making a business of rear- 

 ing brood. Being satisfied that 92 degrees was the lowest 

 point consistent with successful brood-rearing, I next went 

 about finding what is the highest point the bees allow in 

 their hive when the mercury is playing in the 90's in the 

 shade. 



Accordingly, one very warm day in August I placed the 

 thermometer, early in the morning, in the center of the 

 brood-nest of a very strong colony. This day gave prom- 

 ise of being a very warm one, it being 78 degrees in the 

 shade soon after sunrise. At 2 o'clock that afternoon it was 

 too warm to work out in the sun without danger to health, 

 as from 93 to 98 degrees was the range of the mercury in the 

 shade during the first half of the afternooon. The front of 

 nearly every hive in the apiary was covered with bees, while 

 hundreds were plying their wings at the entrance of every 

 hive to keep the temperature as low as possible inside the 

 same. At about sunset the thermometer was lifted from the 

 hive, when I found that the highest point reached was 98 

 degrees, during that extremely warm afternoon. 



Since then I have tried other similar experiments, but 

 have never been able to secure a higher temperature, and 

 generally it would be from a half degree to one or two 

 lower. In this way I have kept experimenting till I am sat- 

 isfied that, to rear brood successfully, the temperature in- 

 side the cluster of bees must reach a point somewhere be- 

 tween 92 and 98 degrees, and any arrangement of hives 

 that will keep it as near those points as possible, with the 

 least expenditure of effort on the part of the bees, would be 

 the hive best suited to the needs of the bees, and conse- 

 quently to the needs of the apiarist. Of course, this only 

 applies to the brood-rearing part, and does not conflict in 

 any way with the using of the proper frames and sections 

 required. 



The points we should look after are those of helping the 

 bees to keep the hive and inside of the cluster warm in 

 spring, and cool during the extreme heat of the summer 

 months ; and the former is more to the advantage of the 

 bees and their keeper than the latter. 



Onondaga Co., N. Y. 



[ Ccnvention Proceedings) 



Report of the Fourth Auuual Meeting of the 



Texas State Bee-Keepers' Association, 



Held at College Station, Tex., July 



5 to 8, 1904. 



REPORTED BY LOUIS H. SCHOLL. 



(Continued from page 600.) 

 W. H. Laws read the following paper on 



THE SHALLOW, OR THE DIVISIBLE, OR THE REQU- 

 LAR LANQSTROTH FRAME— WHICH ? 



The hive question is one that has never bothered my 

 brain to any great extent, and my experience has been 

 almost wholly confined to the regular Langstroth. 



With it, in continual use for the past 18 years, and with 

 handling from 100 to 1000 colonies, I have learned some of 

 its disadvantages as well as some of its advantages. 



It is a noticeable fact that those of our leading men 

 who adopt a shallow hive never cease to extol its merits 

 and remain its advocates. 



Bulk comb honey is the chief product of the bee-men of 

 our part of the State, and by all means we should adopt a 

 hive that is best suited to the production of that article, and 

 the great bulk of our honey is produced in this size of 

 frame, very few using any other size of frame in the api- 

 ary but the regular Langstroth. 



The objections that are most often raised against the 

 standard Langstroth hive is that the depth of the frames is 

 so great that it forbids the use of thin foundation, and also 

 that it is difficult to get all the combs well sealed that we 

 wish to cut and use in our bulk-comb product. 



With these faults I notice that some of our bee-men 

 have looked to a shallower hive with which to secure all well- 

 sealed, white combs of honey built on thin foundation. 

 Some looking for a standard have adopted the Ideal super, 

 using it as a hive from the ground up. Notably our worthy 

 secretary, Mr. Scholl, has this hive in extensive use, and 

 reports that it is indeed an " Ideal " hive for the produc- 

 tion of bulk comb as well as for section honey. 



Were I to turn my forces to the production of one-pound 

 sections of honey, I would surel)' adopt the Ideal hive and 

 super, using two sections of it for a brood-nest, and on the 

 approach of the honey-flow I would cut the brood-nest to 

 one section, using the other section above the supers, or on 

 some weaker colony run for extracted honey. 



But for the production of extracted honey the Ideal 

 frame is too shallow for rapid handling in the extracting- 

 house. We can take honey faster from deeper combs, and 

 in my opinion a frame that will measure seven inches deep, 

 and as long as the Langstroth, is suited best to the needs 

 of the bulk comb products, and that with the greatest ease 

 and results. Such a hive is known as the " Acme." 



W. H. Laws. 



L. Stachelhausen, that old veteran and user of the 

 divisible brood-chamber, told how he used it for years 

 and with the best of results. His hive is almost the same 

 depth as that used by Mr. Scholl, or the Ideal depth, only 

 that he uses a different kind of a frame. His is the same 

 as the old style of Simplicity or all-wood frame, and he 

 spaces it by means of corrugations in the rabbets upon 

 which the frames hang. He prefers this kind of a frame 

 because it gives freer communication between the top-bars, 

 which is not the case with the shallow Hoffman frames as 

 put out by the manufacturers. 



With the wide top-bars it acts too much like a queen- 

 excluder. This prevents the queen from passing freely 

 from one case to another at times, and she will allow her- 

 self to be crowded in one of the shallow cases when there is 

 enough laying room in the others either above or belo\v. 

 Therefore the wide top-bars are a disadvantage. 



He can run more bees by using the divisible hive, as 

 the manipulations are fewer. He can handle whole sections 

 of frames while the bee-keeper with the deep frame is hand" 

 ling only frames. 



Swarming can be controlled much more easily with tliis 

 kind of hive, too, as the hive can be cut up in such a way at 

 the right time as to knock swarming in the head. This can 

 not be done with the Langstroth-frame hive. The frames 

 are too deep for these manipulations. Then " shook " 

 swarming can be practiced much more rapidly with such 

 hives. Building up of colonies, or drawing brood from 

 over-populous ones, can be done much more quickly and 

 effectively, as a case is simply removed and the bees shaken 

 out and the case set on another hive. 



For the production of comb honey, both bulk comb and 

 sections, such a hive is by far the best. Even for extracted 

 honey this is the best hive. More honey can be taken with 

 a shallow-frame hive than one using deep frames. Whereas 

 single combs are taken out of a deep super, a whole case of 



