January, 1908. 



American Hae Journal 



security may be had by the use of wiring or 

 foundation-splints, and for any depth greater 

 than 4 or 5 inches it will be better to have this 

 additional security. 



4. I don't know. Possibly there was room 

 enough in the brood-chamber in proportion to 

 the strength of the colony, so that they didn't 

 need to use any room above. 



5. Vou ought not to get disease by getting 



?ueens anywhere, for an honest man who has 

 oul brood ought not to send out queens. It is 

 generally understood that a queen alone can 

 not convey the disease, so if you are at all 

 in doubt, when you get a queen, put her in a 

 new cage, and burn up the old cage, candy, 

 bees, and all. 



6. Wintering over ii colonies out of 20 was 

 not doing very well. Getting an average of 

 90 pounds per colony was doing well. Just 

 how well depends upon what others did in the 

 same locality; in other words, it depends upon 

 what kind of a year it was. If only an aver- 

 age year, it was doing very well. 



Transferring Bees — Requeening — 

 Peach-Belt Location for Bees. 



1. I am just starting in bee-culture, and 

 want a little advice. I bought 6 colonies in 

 box or native made hives, and want to transfer 

 them to proper hives with supers. How shall 

 I do it? 



2. In the spring I want to give them Italian 

 queens and aestroy the queens already in the 

 hives. How shall I do it? 



3. We are in the great peach-belt, having 

 within a radius of 4 miles 900,000 bearing 

 peach-trees. It seems to me to be an ideal 

 place for bee-culture. vVhat do you think 

 of it? Missouri. 



Answers. — i. Pardon me if I begin by giv- 

 ing some advice not asked for. I most strongly 

 advise you to buy a book of instruction on 

 bee-keeping that will, I am sure, pay more 

 than 100 percent on the investment. Indeed, 

 that is putting it altogether too mildlv, tor 

 before the next season is over the probability 

 is that by a study of such a book you will 

 save its price several times over ]>y avoiding 

 mistakes you would otherwise make. Answer- 

 ing your question, however: 



1. You will, perhaps, do best to let the bees 

 stay in the old hives till after they swarm, 

 hiving the swarms in movable-frame hives. 

 Then 3 weeks after that you can cut up the 

 old hive, and there will be no loss of brood, 

 for at that time all the urood will have hatched 

 out, unless it be a few drones. If you de- 

 sire no increase, you can brush all the bees 

 off the combs, after cutting up the hive, and 

 melt them up for wax. But as before inti- 

 mated, you will do this, as well as anything 

 else with bees, in a more satisfactory manner 

 after giving the whole subject some study with 

 the aid of a text-book. If anything in that is 

 not clearly understood, this department is ex- 

 actly the place to ask questions about it. 



2. It would be rather difficult to do anything 

 in the way of changing queens while the bees 

 are in box-hives. After they are in movable- 

 frame hives you can hunt out and remove the 

 old queen, and put the new queen (caged) in 

 the hive. The cage in which the new queen 

 is received will have printed instructions for 

 introducing sent with it. Some prefer to put 

 the caged queen in the hive before taking away 

 the old one, leaving both queens in the hive 

 together for 2 or 3 days. 



3. Such a big lot of peach-trees must be a 

 fine thing for the bees, but you mustn't count 

 on it as an ideal place unless you have some- 

 thing else to depend upon. The peach blooms 

 early, and is of great value to help colonies to 

 build up, but 1 suppose it is something like the 

 apple in this locality where we are too far 

 north to have peaches. The bees revel on the 

 apple-bloom, but it comes so early that bees 

 are yet too few to gather very abundantly, and 

 what they get from anple is pretty much all 

 used in rearing brood. If you could have the 

 blooming of the peach continue longer, so as to 

 have 4 or 6 weeks from the beginning of the 

 earliest to the close of the latest, it would be a 

 different thing, but I don't suppose peach-bloom 

 lasts so long. ^^_^_^^.^__ 



Afterswarms — Changing from Hed- 

 don to Langstroth Frames. 



About 2 years or mure ago I purchased your 

 book entitled, "Fortv Years Among the Bees." 

 I find it very instructive and often refer to it. 



I am an old veteran of the Civil War. My 

 son and I arc engaged in farming, bee-keep- 

 ing, fruit-growing, and poultry-raising. I have 

 kept bees with varying success for 45 years on 

 a small scale, as a side-line to farming, etc. I 

 use the Langstroth and Heddon hives. I have 

 12 good colonies of bees, mostly Italians. I 



like the Langstroth hive the best, as it is 

 more convenient to get at the queen-cells to 

 cut them all out except after they have cast 

 their first swarm, as I find that unless I lift 

 out every frame of the divisible Heddon hive 

 for that purpose. I do not find all the qiiecn- 

 cells in every instance. Consequently 1 am 

 often bothered with afterswarms. 



I have 10 Heddon hives in which I wish 

 to substitute the Hoffman frame for the two 

 sets of shallow frames, as I find that this hive 

 will take 8 of them, allowing room for a thin 

 dummy or follower, but there is about 2 inches 

 space between the bottom of the frames and 

 bottom-board. What would you advise me to 

 do with that? The bee-space between the ends 

 of the frames and hive is just wide enough 

 for a bee to squeeze through. I would dislike 

 to throw these hives away, as they are sound 

 and well painted. I have about half a crop 

 of comb honey this season. I wish I had run 

 them for extracted honey, as I would have got 

 about twice as much as I did, I get 15 cents 

 per pound for my comb honey. 



My bees had a good flight about a week ago. 

 Yesterday 1 put 3 colonies in my house cellar, 

 which is dry. They are very uneasy now 

 (.Dec. 4). I have chaff cushions and Hill's 

 device on top of the hives. I think they will 

 quiet down as the weather grows colder, as I 

 have the cellar well ventilated and darkened. 

 The bees are up 2^3 feet from the cellar bot- 

 tom. Two are in Langstroth and one in a 

 Heddon hive. The rest are in chaff hives out- 

 doors. Michigan. 



Answer. — I anticipate that the greatest trou- 

 ble in the case will be the small space between 

 the end-bars and the ends of hive. You say a 

 bee can j ust squeeze through, and if there is 

 any real squeezing in the case the bees are 

 likely to fill the space with glue, although it is 

 not so bad in that part of the hive as in other 

 places. There are two ways you can proceed 

 with reference to that 2-inch space at the bot- 

 tom. 



First, you can saw off enough at the bot- 

 tom to make the depth suit you. 



Second, you can leave the sides and back just 

 as they are, and saw out 2 inches or so from 

 the bottom at the front. 



If you take the second way. you can not 

 use the hive for a second story, but it will 

 work all right for a lower story. If you want 

 to tier up you will have to take the first plan, 

 or at least you must take the first plan for 

 any that are to be used as upper stories. If 

 you take the second plan you will have some- 

 thing like a 2-inch space under your bottom- 

 bars, and that's just what I have, only with 

 mine the 2-inch space is in the bottom-board. 

 That deep space is a splendid thing in winter, 

 but of course if it is left during the harvest 

 the bees will build down into it; so you must 

 have it filled in some way during the time 

 there is any danger of building. One way is 

 simply to slip under a board that is 2 or 3 

 inches narrower than the inside width of the 

 hive, and 2 or 3 inches shorter than the inside 

 length, tacking 2 little sticks on the under side 

 if needed to raise it within J^ or ^ inch of the 

 bottom-bars. Even an inch space is not likely 

 to make any trouble. A better way is to use 

 a sort of rack instead of the board. Take 3 

 sticks, each perhaps z]4 inches shorter than the 

 inside width of the hive, one for each end of 

 your rack and one for the middle. They may 

 be H to l4 inch in thickness, and H to i inch 

 wide. Upon these nail thin strips about H inch 

 wide, with a space of ^ to ^^ inch between 

 each 2 strips. Turn the thing over, and nail 

 the same kind of strips on the under side, 

 only let them break joint with the strips on 

 the other side. Wooden separators will do for 

 these strips. On the under side you will nail 

 2 sticks running lengthwise that shall be thick 

 enough to leave a space of ^ to i inch between 

 tiie rack and the bottom-bars. This will give 

 you the advantage of fine chance for ventila- 

 tion during harvest, and at the same time will 

 not allow the bees to build down. I have been 

 using a number of these ventilation-racks, and 

 like them very much. 



Age of Larvae for Queen-Rearing. 



I notice on page 757, you use the following 

 language: "You will be told by some good bee- 

 keepers, and intelligent, that bees will be in 

 such a hurry to rear a young queen that they 

 will select larva; too old for best success." 

 Then a few lines further on you say, "I do 

 not at all believe they [those bee-keepers] are 

 correct." 



I am in no sense a queen-breeder whose 

 opinion is entitled to any great respect, but 

 I rear my own queens, and in that connection 

 I wish to give you the result o| the only ex- 

 periment I ever made along that line. Last 

 summer, in transferring larva from the comb 

 to the cell-cups, I purposely selected one that 

 I thought wn« too old. I put the frame con- 



taining about 20 cell'Cups with larvse into a 

 colony that had been queenless over a week. 



I did not mark the cup into which I placed 

 the old larva, because I did not for a moment 

 believe it would be accepted. A large propor- 

 tion of the cells were accepted and among them 

 the one containing the old larva. I introduced 

 the ripe cells and a few days after I looked 

 through the colonies to see it the queens were 

 laying. They were all doing well but one. 



This was a very odd-looking bee. She was 

 plainly not a worker, yet she did not look like 

 the other queens. Her abdomen was short, 

 but at the same time somewhat elongated. The 

 bee, I should judge, was fully 30 percent larger 

 than the workers. There was no mistake about 

 her being the queen I had introduced in the 

 cell, because she was reared from a Banat 

 mother, while my stock were hybrids of a very 

 dusky hue. Evidently this queen had not 

 mated, as during the four weeks I kept her, 

 there was not an egg in the hive. On picking 

 up the supposed queen, she tried to use her 

 sting. She never failed to fight as wickedly 

 as a worker except she made no attempt to fly. 



Now, I assumed that that queen was the 

 product of the old larva I had selected. I 

 have regretted ever since that I did not mark 

 the cell base; then I could have traced her. 

 I do not believe the nurse-bees neglected to 

 feed one larva as well as they did the others, 

 for the other queens were as fine, large and 

 vigorous as any I ever saw. I call them my 

 *'camelback" nueens, because their ovaries are 

 so well developed that the abdomen carries a 

 hump. I think the most reasonable conclusion 

 is that the bees fed all of the larvae alike, and 

 that the only way to account for the freak 

 is from the fact that the larva from which she 

 was grown was a little too old. 



Bees may not select a larva that is too old, 

 but I believe they sometimes accept one that 

 is. And where as many as 20 are provided, it 

 looks to me as if it practically amounts to 

 selecting it, if they accept one that is too old. 



K.\NS.\S. 



Answer. — My good friend, there is no con- 

 troversy whatever between us except as to 

 what is contained in your last sentence. In 

 the sentence preceding it you say you believe 

 bees sometimes accept a larva that is too old. 

 Not only do I believe they sometimes do. but 

 that they frequently do so, where man inter- 

 feres. Unqueen a colony, and the bees will 

 select a larva of proper age from which to 

 rear a queen. Not only one. but they will se- 

 lect several, as they seem to provide against 

 emergencies, and this same spirit makes them 

 start other cells later on, when no larva suffi- 

 ciently young is present, and they are forced 

 to accept those too old. No harm will come 

 from this if the bees are left entirely to them- 

 selves, as these too-old larvx will hatch later 

 than the better ones, and be destroyed by 

 them. But harm will result if the bee-keeper 

 should take any of these objectionable cells and 

 use them. 



But when you say. "And where as many as 

 20 are provided, it looks to me as if it prac- 

 tically amounts to selecting it if they accept 

 one that is too old," you will pardon me for 

 saying that it doesn't look that way to me. 

 For a larva put into a queen-cell cup, whether 

 the cup be natural or artificial, is a very differ- 

 ent thing from the same larva in its original 

 worker-cell. This is very plainly shown by the 

 fact that a much larger percent of larvae in 

 such cups are accepted, as comoared with those 

 in worker-cells. Provide 20 cells with larvae, 

 and you are having poor success if 50 percent 

 of them are not accepted, while not one in a 

 thousand of the larvs in worker-cells will be 

 chosen for royalty. Very likely you will say, 

 "But of those 20 cells, a number were re- 

 jected that had larvae very young, while one 

 with a too-old larva was accepted." Ouite 

 true, but the age of the larva had nothing to 

 do with that. Bees are fastidious little crea- 

 tures, and although you may think you have 

 treated all cells exactly alike, they take ex- 

 ception to something in a cell that to you 

 seems all right, and will have nothing to do 

 with it. no matter how young the larva. 



AU the same, thanks' arc due for the inter- 

 esting story ot the case reported. 



Number of Colonies for the Field — 



Value of Bpx-Hive Colonies — 



Transferring, Etc. 



I. I have 6 colonies of bees on the Ohio 

 river. The principal honey-flow there comes 

 late in the season from weeds that grow along 

 the river and in the cornfields along the river 

 bottoms. The strip of bottom-land given over 

 almost entirely to corn-raising is about 2 miles 

 wide. Last season my 6 colonies gave me 

 428 pounds of honey. How many colonies 

 could you have there and secure as good an 

 average (71 lbs.) as this)" 



