Jan. 17, 1901. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



43 



< >ii removing the frame of brood, I brusht all the bees from 

 it. What caused them to dwindle and die ? 



3. Can I feed those combs of honey to two weak colo- 

 nies I have, or should I give them sugar syrup ? I am win- 

 tering 20 colonies in frame and box hives. 



4. I had five colonies last spring that gave me 20 to 30 

 pounds of surplus comb honey each. The swarms gave me 

 no surplus. I put them on new stands with one frame of 

 brood and seven frames of foundation 3 inches wide. What 

 could I have done to make them do any better ? 



New Brunswick. 

 Answers. — 1. The kind of frame hive you already have 

 is the one to continue, unless there is some good reason for 

 making a change, for it is a very troublesome thing to have 

 two kinds of hives in the same apiary, especially if they 

 have frames of different sizes. The size of frame most 

 generally in use is probably as good as any, measuring 

 17;-sx9's, outside measure. This is the frame used in the 

 dovetailed or Langstroth hive. 



2. Very likely they were queenless. 



3. It will be all right to use the combs of honey, unless 

 the bees were diseased, which is not likely. 



4. You got all your honey from the old colonies, and 

 tione from the swarms. It may be that you would have 

 had more honey if you had depended more on the swarms 

 by managing in this way : When the swarm issues, put it 

 on the old stand, setting the old hive close beside it. A 

 week later remove the old hive to a new location. That 

 will throw the whole field-force into the swarm, and altho 

 you may get nothing from the old colony, you will have a 

 strong force in the s%varm, and your total yield may be 

 greater. 



What Killed the Bees ? Other ttuestions. 



The season of 19ii0 opened the best in many years, with 

 a big flow from fruit-bloom, mostly from plum and wild 

 cherry, the scales showing a gain of four to six pounds per 

 day. Then the great drouth commenced, which lasted un- 

 til Aug. 4th. It was too dry for basswood to yield nectar. 

 From the above date until September there was almost a 

 daily rain. The stores from the spring-flow were about all 

 gone, and it lookt as if every colony would have to be fed, 

 or starve. The rain brought an immense growth of weeds 

 on the wheat stubble, and with a few fair days the bees 

 filled their hives with the most villainous honey you ever 

 saw, almost black, and the flavor was worse than anything 

 I ever met with before. It was from what is called wild 

 buckwheat — a vine that has a seed shaped like buckwheat. 

 A few cold, rainy days followed, when the bees commenced 

 throwing out dead larva; and young bees. Examining, I 

 found frames of brood being uncapt, with not an egg or 

 j'oung bee alive. This was the. case with every colony 

 <about 80), and there was not another bee reared, to the best 

 of my knowledge, and I examined them frequently. 



1. Now, the question is, what killed them ? 



2. Will they rear brood in the spring on such stores ? 



3. Will it be best to take the honey away and feed as 

 soon as taken from the cellar? They seem to be wintering 

 all right, with no unusual number dying. 



Centr.\l Minnesota. 



Answers. — 1. I don't know. It looks as tho that vil- 

 lainous black imitation of honey killed them. Yet from 

 what you say they must have been living on the same stuff 

 since, and it does not hurt them. It is just possible that 

 they got something poisonous that killed them, and none of 

 it is now in the hives. 



L-n 2. As they are wintering well upon it, it is quite likely 

 they will rear brood with it next spring. 



3. Keep a close watch in spring, and if everything goes 

 straight, and brood appears healthy, let it be ; but if the 

 brood dies, or there is no brood, then change the stores. 



Spring Feeding— Two Apiaries or One? 



1. Do you know of any objection to the following plan 

 of feeding and strengthening a colony in the spring ? 

 Would bees object to the partial division of their home 

 when in two hives ? If not, would they be less likely to 

 swarm, being on 16 Langstroth frames ? 



Start feeding an 8-frame colony early in the spring, 

 and before the queen gets crowded put them in a 10-frame 

 hive. Go on feeding, and then transfer them to two 8- 

 frame hives set close together, with the adjacent sides per- 

 forated every few inches, and with a bee-way top and bot- 



tom. Goon feeding gently until a week before the honey- 

 flow, and then put on two supers, side by side. 



2. Will bees refrain from carrying up syrup fed to 

 them, so long as the queen is not crowded ? 



3. Do you think there would be any advantage, so far 

 as yield of honey is concerned, in dividing an apiary of 140 

 colonies, spring count, when the out-apiary is to be only '^ 

 mile distant from the home-apiary, assuming, of course, 

 equal conditions all around as to bloom ? Minn. 



Answers.— 1. The probability is that the queen would 

 not go readily from one hive to the other, when you had the 

 two hives side by side with holes for passageways, and if 

 she did go from one to the other, there would be some like- 

 lihood of the bees starting queen-cells in the one she had 

 left. 



Instead of first changing from the 8-frame hive to a 10- 

 frame, and then to two 8-frame hives side by side, it would 

 be much simpler, and probably better, to start at once with 

 the two 8-frame hives, putting one hive over the other. As 

 soon as you think the bees are in danger of being crowded 

 with only eight frames, put the second story under the first. 

 Even if this is done before the bees are at all crowded, it 

 will do no hurt. The heat of the hive rises, and an empty 

 hive below would not cool off the brood-nest as it would 

 with the empty hive above or at the side. Then when the 

 bees became crowded above they could work down into the 

 lower story ; or, if you thought they were too lazy about it 

 you could put a frame of brood from the upper story in the 

 lower story. But when it comes time to put on supers, I 

 have always found it better to take away one story, crowd- 

 ing with brood the story left. 



2. Yes, the bees will store in the brood-combs anything 

 fed to them, so long as there is plenty of room there. But 

 it is not wise to crowd the brood-nest at any time, for there 

 is a possibility that the combs may fill up so rapidly with 

 brood that the bees will feel obliged to empty some of the 

 cells in the brood-combs of their stores, carrying the same 

 up into the super, altho when the stores were given there 

 may have been abundance of room in the brood-combs. 



3. Most surely, in any ordinary location. The only ex- 

 ception would be in some location so remarkably rich in re- 

 sources that 140 colonies could get all they could gather 

 without going farther than -'+ of a mile from home. 



Using Extracted Honey=Dew Profitably. 



How can extracted honey-dew be used in the apiary to 

 good profit and advantage? What other uses can there be 

 made of it ? Kansas City. 



Answer. — It can be fed to good advantage in the 

 spring to be workt up into brood. It may also be sold for 

 manufacturing purposes. 



tietting Extra Extracting-Combs. 



\ 



Being short of extracting-combs, I am thinking of fill- 

 ing the supers next spring with combs, and the frames with 

 starters, half and half, alternately. How would it do ? 



I extracted my fall aster honey in November, and got 

 about 40 pounds to the colony, which makes about 70 pounds 

 for the year — about an average with us here. I winter my 

 bees outdoors, of course, and up to this time they have had 

 a good flight every day, if not raining. 



South C \rtoi.-:: ■ , 



Answer. — If I understand you rightly, there wia ue a 

 fully-drawn comb, then a frame with a starter perhaps an 

 inch deep, then a drawn comb, then a starter, and so on. 

 An objection to this, especially if the harvest is at first a 

 little slow, is that the bees will draw out deeper the cells of 

 the fully-finisht combs, and will make the newly built 

 combs very thin. It may be better to have all the drawn 

 combs together on one side, and all the starters together on 

 the other side. Then your combs will be more uniform in 

 thickness. If the extracting-combs are of the same size as 

 the brood-combs, you might like the plan of having the new 

 combs built in the brood-nest instead of in the super. In 

 that case you can alternate the frames, for when used for 

 brood there will not be the same danger of having the 

 combs unequal in thickness. Moreover, if you prefer 

 worker-combs, you will have less drone-comb built in the 

 brood-nest than in the super. 



The Premiums offered this ■ 

 ing for. Look at them. 



reek are well ' 



rth 



