May 16, 1901. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



313 



one frame, and in this case you may use only starters, and 

 have a fair chance for little drone-comb. That leaves on 

 the old stand the old queen and the field-force, and if the 

 colony is very strong you may risk shaking- off a few of the 

 bees into the old hive from the frames you remove. But all 

 the old bees will return to the old stand in a day or two, and 

 it might leave the new colon)' with hardly enough bees to 

 care for the brood, so it will be safer to take all the adher- 

 ing bees with the combs you put in the new hive on the 

 new stand. Two days later take the remaining frame of 

 brood from the old colony, and at the same time give to the 

 new colony a sealed queen-cell. 



I have a suspicion that you are not anxious for increase 

 from these colonies, but intend to divide them because you 

 know they will swarm if you do not divide. If that is the 

 case, your plan is easy : Just before there is any danger of 

 swarming, remove from its stand a hive and put in its place 

 a hive filled with foundation, putting the queen in this 

 hive, and putting over it a queen-excluder, over which you 

 will place the old hive with its contents. When these two 

 hives are so filled that more room is needed, you can put 

 between the two stories and over the excluder a super either 

 for comb or extracted. With this management you may 

 count on freedom from swarming, unless your experience 

 is exceptional, and you can make your increase nearer 

 home where you can have it directly under your eye. You 

 will readily understand that 21 days after operating there 

 will be no worker-brood in any but the lower story. There 

 may be some drones in the upper story that can not escape, 

 but I have found this trouble more theoretical than real. 

 The remains of the drones will be there the first time you 

 open the hive, and you can easily shake them off the ex- 

 cluder. 



Don't you be worried about asking foolish questions. 

 Bless your heart, if you can study up any more foolish 

 things than I have done in the course of my experience you 

 must be an adept in the line of foolishness. The worst 

 of it is that in my case I haven't yet outgrown it, and ex- 

 pect to make more or less blunders as long as I live. I con- 

 fess to you (but this is only between ourselves) that I do 

 sometimes feel a little impatient when some one asks ques- 

 tions that are plainly answered in every text-book pub- 

 lished ; but when one has studied the text-books carefully 

 there will still be always plenty of questions to be asked, 

 and with such I am quite willing to be flooded — glad to 

 answer them just so far as I know how. And this suggests 

 to me that you may ask why leave that one frame of brood 

 instead of taking all, and then why take it away later. If 

 the bees are left with larder entirely bare, they may desert 

 the hive, and if the frame of brood is not taken away within 

 a few days they may prepare to swarm. If you ask why 

 they will swarm if that one frame of brood is left, I may 

 explain that — that is — well, the fact is I don't know. 



tiehrlng's Bee-Veil and Way of Smoking Bees. 



I have been reading Mr. Gehring's series of articles 

 now running in the American Bee Journal, but I don't 

 quite like his bee-veil, nor his way of smoking bees before 

 opening a hive. What do you think of them. Doctor? 



BUNGHEAD. 



Answer. — The bee-veil described by Mr. Gehring in 

 his very interesting articles will answer a very good pur- 

 pose, but is objectionable in one respect — it is made of too 

 close material. When the weather is cool this will matter 

 little, but on a hot day it would be very uncomfortable, and 

 to wear it all day long on such a day would be, I should 

 judge, a rather severe punishment. I wear a veil that has 

 no closer material about it than bobbinet or cape-lace, and 

 although that is so open that one might think it would not 

 obstruct the air, yet actual trial shows that it offers decided 

 obstruction, and when I have had -one on for some time on 

 a hot day it is a decided relief to get it off. 



I doubt whether you would dislike his way of smoking 

 bees before opening a hive, if you were actually to see liim 

 at work, for it is not very likely he does just as he says. It 

 is quite common to say that a man preaches better than he 

 practices. This is probably a case in which the practice is 

 better than the preachini,s and no doubt writing away from 

 the hive he had not in mind as clearly as he might just 

 what his practice was. Taking it. however, just as it reads, 

 his first act was to blow smoke into the entrance for ;i bout 

 30 seconds, working the bellows with .slow, steady pressure 

 so as not to alarm the bees with the noise of quicker 

 motions. Just what is meant by that last I do not fully 



understand, for it is hardly possible that any noise made 

 by the smoker can alarm the bees a tenth part as much as 

 the horrible flood of smoke that many of the bees have 

 never before experienced. Indeed, the very object of the 

 smoke is to alarm the bees. 



I very much doubt that in actual practice Mr. Gehring 

 blows smoke into the entrance for 30 seconds, first starting 

 " a good volume of smoke." I have just been trying it by 

 the watch, and working the bellows what I considered 

 slowly I made 42 puffs in 30 seconds, and 69 puffs when 

 puffing at the usual rate. That would certainly be an un- 

 necessary amount of smoke, in some cases driving the bees 

 out of the hive, and in any case frightening the bees so 

 much that it would be difficult to find a queen. Then he 

 waited a few minutes for the bees to gorge themselves. A 

 " few minutes " would hardly be understood as less than 

 three minutes. That would leave the bees in good condi- 

 tion to handle, but a practical bee-keeper would hardly feel 

 he could afford to take so much time. If I may be allowed 

 to refer to my own practice, instead of taking 3'. minutes 

 from the first puff in the entrance before opening the hive, 

 I do not take one-sixtieth of that time, for two or three 

 puffs are all that are given, when, without waiting a frac- 

 tion of a second for the bees to gorge themselves, I imme- 

 diately open the hive, giving them two, three, or four puffs 

 on top of the frames. That will usually be sufficient, but if 

 at any time they show fight they get more. The humming 

 noise spoken of is a proof of thorough submission ; I would 

 hardly consider it one of " satisfaction," but the opposite. 

 Neither would.I want to have the bees proceed to much of a 

 humming noise unless I wanted to drive them out. 



Using Old Combs-Getting Increase-Italians vs. Blacks. 



1. Will the combs of a colony of bees that died with the 

 dysentery do to use again ? 



2. I have 8 colonies of bees which I wish to increase to 

 20. Would you advise dividing, or natural swarming ? 



3. Are the Italians more apt to have dysentery than the 

 blacks ? I lost 3 colonies this spring — one being black, and 

 all having the same chance. H. C. A. 



Answers. — Yes ; scrape off the wood of the frame as 

 clean as you can, and the bees will do the rest. Instead of 

 throwing a swarm into a hive full of such combs, it will be 

 better to get them first cleaned up by the bees, for if they 

 are very filthy a swarm might object to them. Put the 

 hive of'combs under a strong colony and oblige the bees ta 

 pass through it to get in or out. But if you want thatcol- 

 ony to swarm, don't leave the hive under it after swarming- 

 time begins. 



2. That's a somewhat difficult question to answer. If 

 you have had little or no experience, perhaps natural 

 swarming would be best. But taking the matter into your 

 own hands will give vou fuller control. Possibly a combi- 

 nation might be best." Wait for three or four of the first to 

 swarm, then divide the old colonies into nuclei to be built 

 up from those that have not swarmed. 



3. Italians have not had the reputation for being more 

 inclined to diarrhea, or any other disease than blacks. In 

 fact they have been credited, especially in Australia, with 

 being much better to resist foul brood than blacks. Your 

 experience, however, looks as if your blacks resisted diar- 

 rhea better than your Italians. 



Bees Cross at Swarming-Time. 



I purchased 3 colonies of bees in the fall, and the per- 

 son delivering them put them down in the most convenient 

 place, and I let them alone until I could familiarize myself 

 with them. I came home in the forenoon of April 20th, 

 and found they had swarmed (about a peck measure full), so 

 I had to make a virtue of necessity, and went about it 

 according to the formula in the " A B C of Bee-Culture." 

 I got a hive with full frames of foundation, laid it down on 

 the top of a sheet, got a box and a turkey wing and went 

 to sweeping them into the box (as they were clustered on a 

 tight board fence under the top rail). I got some of them 

 into the box, but it did not take me long to tumble what I 

 had in the box down in front of the hive, and make a very 

 hasty retreat. 



Now I take it for granted that there was something 

 wrong with my manipulation, for Mr. Root says that they 

 would be so full of honey that they would not fight, but X 

 need not tell you that I am nursing my wounds yet. I had 



