April 18, 1901. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, 



245 



I Contributed Articles, l 



Saving Section-Combs From Foul-Broody Colonies. 



BY WILMAM M'BVOY. 



LAST fall foul brood started in one of my out-apiaries. I had the 

 affected colonies removed out of reach of the other bees, and then 

 burned the brood-frames add the hives. Mv apiaries are arraugred 

 for comb-honey production, and at the close of the season the 

 supers from all the apiaries were brought in, and thru mistake those 

 from the diseased apiary were piled in with the others, and now I don't 

 know the one from the other. 



I liud that I have about 200 supers full of sections which contain 

 empty combs, and combs partly filled with honey. Will you kindly tell 

 me if those supers, just as they have been taken off the hive, and ready 

 for use, can be safelv used the coming season without spreading the 

 disease?— Illinois, U. S. 



In the honey season bees store honey in cells where 

 foul-brood matter has dried down, just the same as they do 

 in other empty cells, and when the bees, in making' room 

 for brood in times of honej'-flovrs remove the unsealed 

 honey out of the diseased cells to cells partly filled with 

 good honey in the sections above, it will disease it at otice. 



If you had extracted the honey out of those sections 

 and then placed them back on the foul-broody colonies, 

 and left them there until the bees lickt them out clean and 

 dry, that would have made them perfectly safe to use on 

 any colony of bees. But as the case now stands, you can 

 not place the sections that contain honey on your brood- 

 chambers without spreading- the disease, because some of 

 the sections that were taken off the foul-broody colonies 

 will have a little of the diseased honej' in them, and the 

 bees will feed some of it direct to the larvae as soon as you 

 put them on. 



It costs yoit something- to buy these sections, and comb 

 foundation, and it took some time to put the foundation 

 into over 5,000 sections, and your bees added many dollars 

 to their value when they drew out so much foundation into 

 nice combs, and if you had to destroy the 200 supers and 

 their contents (to be safe), it would be a serious loss to you. 

 You don't need to destroy anything if you treat as follows : 



Take every section that has any honey in if, out of the 

 supers, and bring them into a warm room, run the temper- 

 ature up above summer heat, and leave them there until 

 you can extract the honey out of them easily, then extract 

 the honey out of every section, and after you have done this 

 put all of these sections into supers by themselves. Then 

 put frames with comb foundation starters, into empty 

 hives, and on these place queen-excluders and the extracted 

 sections, and in the honey season hive your swarms in 

 these prepared empty hives with the extracted sections on 

 where you will get them filled up and finisht in the shortest 

 possible time. 



All the sections that you have with clean, dry combs in 

 are perfectly safe to use on any of your old hives of bees. 

 When the robbing season is over, and your bees are 

 working nicely in fruit-bloom, take the combs out of the 

 brood-chambers (in the apiary that was diseased), and hold 

 them so the sun can shine into the bottom of the cells, atid 

 very carefully look for stain marks of foul brood on the 

 lower side and bottom of the cells. Foul-brood matter 

 glues itself fast to the lower side and bottom of the cells 

 when it is drying down, and there it will remain just as 

 long as the comb lasts, and such combs can not be made safe 

 to use, but it is entirely different with clean, new, white 

 combs that never had any brood in — they are perfectly safe 

 to use on any colony of bees after they have been lickt out 

 by the bees until they are clean and dry. 



If j'ou find a few cells with the stain marks of foul 

 brood in any of your colonies (a thing you might easily 

 overlook), treat such colonies during the honey-flow, but 

 don't waste any time on empty hives that foul brood has 

 been in, because they can not disease any colony of bees. 

 Woodburn, Ont., Canada. 



Producing Extracted Honey—Getting More of It. 



BY C. DAVENPORT. 



IN order to understand how more surplus extracted honey, 

 with less work and less swarming, can be secured here 

 by the method I am about to describe, if only eight 

 frames are allowed for a brood-nest, than can be when a 



larger number are used, it will be necessary for me briefly 

 to describe a few things in regard to my locality, the most 

 important of which is that in the spring, after the weather 

 becomes warm enough for brood-rearing to progress rap- 

 idly, there is but a short time, comparatively, until the 

 white harvest commences. Eight frames are all or more 

 than 90 percent of the queens can keep full of brood and 

 eggs before clover bloom ; afterwards thru June, July and 

 August, a larger number of combs, if the queens are al- 

 lowed access to them, will be kept full of brood. But before 

 this extra brood matures into field-bees, the battle has 

 already been fought — like Blucher at Waterloo, they appear 

 too late. 



In a locality where the weather, or the time of the 

 main flow, is such that a young queen can occupy a larger 

 number of frames in time so that the brood will mature 

 into field-bees to be of service during the harvest, it would, 

 without any question, pay to use a larger brood-chamber. 

 Usually here there is enough gathered from early spring 

 until clover bloom to keep brood-rearing up. Strong colo- 

 nies often secure more than they can use for this purpose, 

 but what is gathered before clover is dark and hardly fit 

 for table use. Now, with strong colonies run for extracted 

 honey, instead of putting on the regular full-depth extract- 

 ing combs, a set of shallow frames is given them to store 

 this dark spring honey in, and what they do not use for 

 brood-rearing is all put in them, for they enter and occupy 

 these shallow combs almost as soon as they are placed on 

 the hives. Often when the white flow commences these 

 strong colonies will have hardly a pound of honey in the 

 brood-frames, tho the super of shallow combs may be 

 nearly full. But, as I have said, this is dark honey, and if 

 it was in the regular extracting frames it would have to be 

 extracted, or the first extracting of choice white clover 

 honey would be so badly colored by it that it would not 

 sell for much if any more than half what pure clover 

 would bring. 



Now note this : By using this super of shallow combs, 

 we save one extracting, and keep the brood-nest bare of 

 stores. Here, just at or soon after, the commencement of 

 the main flow is the time strong colonies prepare to swarm, 

 but when we remove this super containing all their stores, 

 a full-depth story of empty combs is given. Zinc is placed 

 between the two stories, two or three of the frames con- 

 taining the most hatching brood are placed in the upper 

 story, and a like ntimber of empty combs from the upper 

 tory are placed in the center of the brood-nest below. A 

 colony so treated will, with me, seldom offer to swarm, no 

 matter how good the season is, provided they are given 

 plenty of drawn comb to store all the nectar they can 

 gather, for there is practically no honey in the brood-cham- 

 ber at any time during the swarming season. 



With 10-f rame hives the case is different; the queen, as I 

 have explained, can not occupy more than eight of these 

 frames, and the unoccupied space will always be filled 

 with honey before the bees will store any in shallow frames 

 overhead, and honey in the brood-chamber is a great factor 

 to induce swarming. The frames containing the most 

 honey can, of course, be removed to the upper story at the 

 time it is set on. I have often done this, but it does not 

 have the check on swarming that the entire removal of all 

 stores does. But I have found that with these 10-fraine 

 hives, even if the combs containing the most honey are 

 entirely removed, swarming is more apt to occur than with 

 s frames, for the reason that with 10 frames, storage in the 

 brood-chamber is more apt to be commenced, or rather con- 

 tinued, and when once started it is apt to be kept up until 

 the queen becomes crowded, then swarming is the natural 

 outcome. Even when two full-depth stories are allowed 

 for a brood-chamber, I have often found that the t^ueen 

 would become crowded enough to induce swarming unless 

 a. close watch was kept. 



If one has time during the main flow to overhaul and 

 extract from these large brood-chambers, swarming can 

 largely be prevented, or if 3 or 4 stories are u.sed, and the 

 queen is allowed access to all of them, but little swarming 

 will take place. But when we come to extract from such at 

 the end of the flow, the amount of surplus found after over- 

 hauling the whole outfit will be disappointing if compared 

 with what is secured from colonies whose queens are con- 

 fined to eight or ten frames. 



By the use of these half-depth stories, I have been able 

 to overcome most of the difficulties I found about produc- 

 ing extracted honey in a large way, first in regard to this 

 dark surplus gathered in the spring. When the regular 

 full-depth extracting frames were set on first, most of them 

 had to be extracted before the white flow and with a large 



