September, 1908. 



American ;Bec Journalj ^^^^^^B 



to the "Rucher Beige," and the names 

 of the writers quoted by me are men- 

 tioned in it in exactly the same order 

 as I had given them. 



It is certainly a matter of congratu- 

 lation that my studies are considered 

 sutlkiently valuable to be quoted, but 

 courtesy would seem to require giving 

 each man due credit, and the '"Rucher 

 Beige" is evidently at fault in this in- 

 stance. 



Hamilton, 111. 



Bee-Hives for the Business- 

 Man 



BY C. P. DADANT. 



I am a very busy man, keep a store, and 

 live in the suburbs of the city. What style 

 of hive would you advise me to use under the 

 circumstances? — CiTv Bes-KeepSr. 



There are many men in exactly the 

 same circumstances as you are — doctors, 

 lawyers, teachers, ministers, men who 

 may keep bees — to whom bee-culture is 

 a recreation and an addition to the in- 

 come, but who cannot afford to remain 

 at home to look after the bees, and 

 must work with them at odd hours and 

 trust them to themselves during the re- 

 mainder of the time. To these men I 

 emphatically recommend large hives and 

 the production of extracted honey. I 

 lately visited two amateur bee-keepers, 

 the first one using the 8- frame Lang- 

 stroth hive with section supers, the 

 other using a very large brood-chamber 

 with the Dadant system of shallow e.x- 

 tracting supers. 



In each case I enquired about the re- 

 sults of the clover season. Said the 

 8-frame hive man : 



"I had 10 colonies to begin the sea- 

 son, and now have 36. I don't know 

 how many swarms I had, but I filled 

 all the empty hives that were in my 

 reach, and then began to put the late 

 swarms — small swarms they were — two 

 or three together in each hive. I had 

 late swarms that did not weigh over 

 a pound or two." 

 "How much honey did you harvest?" 

 "I took 95 full sections, and think I 

 have about that many full on the hives 

 yet. I would like the bee-business very 

 well if it was not for the excessive 

 swarming." 



The other man said: "I had 3 colo- 

 nies to begin the season. They have not 

 swarmed. I put 2 supers on each of 

 them. I have supers with the combs 

 already built which I preserve from one 

 year to another, and if they are put on 

 early enough I have but little fear of 

 swarming. When I want increase 

 (which I do not desire, because of lack 

 of room), I make artificial swarms by 

 division and queen-introduction." 



"How much honey have you harvest- 

 ed?" 



"I have taken off 200 pounds of ex- 

 tracted honey, and there is about the 

 same quantity in the supers now." 



The above are not isolated cases. 

 They represent the average of happen- 

 ings with colonies under the different 

 systems. The man with small hives is 

 pestered with swarms whenever the sea- 

 son is good, because his bees are crowd- 

 ed for room for breeding. Wheri they 

 once have the swarming fever it is dif- 

 ficult to cure, and they swarm them- 



selves to death. On the other hand, 

 colonies in large hives, in which the 

 queen is not crowded for laying room, 

 produce a large number of workers — 

 they become very populous; but if su- 

 pers full of empty combs already built 

 are furnished to them in time, there is 

 no desire for swarming, except in the 

 cases of supersedure, which are in only 

 a small percentage of the number of 

 colonies. Swarming is thus checked and 

 reduced to the lowest possible mini- 

 mum. 



The busy man will readily understand 

 that it is much more profitable to fol- 

 low the latter plan. There is no need 

 of watching the bees, during the swarm- 

 ing season, for the number of swarms 

 that may escape is insignificant. But 

 there is another advantage : The bees 

 in large hives have a greater storing 

 capacity for honey, not only in the su- 

 pers, but in the brood-chamber as well. 

 If they are permitted to retain all the 

 honey that the brood-chamber contains 

 when fall comes, they have a very mijch 

 more certain prospect of safe wintering 

 than the colonies whose hives, being of 

 reduced capacity, are both less populous 

 and less provided with food. If swarms 

 issue from those large hives, they are 

 exceedingly strong, and therefore much 

 better prepared to fill their hives, than 

 are the insignificant swarms which of- 

 ten issue from small hives. 



Lastly, while a large hive may easilv 

 be reduced to the needs of a small 

 colony, by the use of division-boards 

 or dummies, a small hive cannot be 

 enlarged at will to suit the very largest 

 colonies. 



My advice, therefore, to those who 

 keep bees as a side-issue, and cannot 

 give them more than a few spare mo- 

 ments at special hours, is to use very 

 large hives and the extracting system. 

 Empty combs are the wealth of the 

 apiarist; they enable him to produce 

 large crops with a limited nuinber of 

 colonies, and these combs may be saved 

 from year to year with great profit. 



"Honor to whom Honor." 

 Mr. Editor, allow me to digress from 

 the subject of this article to criticize 

 the plagiarism and pilfering bv differ- 

 ent writers. This seems to take place 

 in Europe fully as much as in Amer- 

 ica. Last year, I wrote an article for 

 the Swiss Bulletin De La Societe Ro- 

 mande, in which I criticized a certain 

 writer who claims that the young queen 

 and not the old one goes with the first 

 swarm. I cited 23 different writers 

 on this subject, all authors of books 

 on bees. It appears that the "Rucher 

 Beige" reproduced my article without 

 giving credit, as the matter is men- 

 tioned in Gleanings for July 15, credited 



Dry as a Chip 



BY RALPH BENTON. 



How many times have we uttered the 

 words, "Dry as a chip," when we have 

 disappointingly gone to the bread or 

 cake tin in the pantry only to find a 

 whole half cake dried out and unappe- 

 tizing? Or perhaps we have put up a 

 fine lunch in the morning to find that 

 at noon time when we have come to 

 lay out our cake at the family picnic, 

 it is almost spoiled by its long jaunt 

 over the hills. 



Our baker friends have long known 

 of a way of preventing the -comiiig 

 about of these calamities, and that in 

 a most economical way. You perhaps 

 as a child remember having eaten with 

 a relish when going to the bake-shop 

 on an errand, those animal cakes, large, 

 thick, ginger cakes that are always 

 moist and fresh no matter how long 

 they may have lain in the shop win- 

 dow? Well, the "trick of the trade" 

 the baker here brings into play to keep 

 his articles fresh, is the use of honey 

 in his cakes. For the lighter cakes light 

 and mild honey is used, and for the 

 heavier and coarser cakes, the dark, 

 strong-flavored honeys, such as buck- 

 wheat honey, are used, bringing with 

 its use that rich flavor of the cakes the 

 children like so well. 



By this we do not mean that honey 

 should be indiscriminately poured into 

 every combination of rich cake, but 

 there are a number of excellent re- 

 ceipts for using honey in gems, cookies, 

 fruit cakes and layer cakes, all of which 

 are worthy of investigation by the 

 thoughtful and careful housewife. The 

 receipts are too long a list to be de- 

 tailed here, but can surely be easily 

 gotten somewhere. Try the bee jour- 

 nals or the producer of the honey sold 

 in your locality. The grocer may not 

 know the receipts, but he will probably 

 be glad to give you the name of his 

 honey producer. It is worth investigat- 

 ing, we believe.— National Bee-Keepers' 

 Association. 



Uniting Bees-Feeders and 

 Feed 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



A correspondent wishes to know, 

 through the columns of the American 

 Bee Journal, how it would do to unite 

 2 weak colonics of bees for winter. 



This is the proper thing to do, for 2 

 weak colonics kept separate, will con- 

 sume nearly twice the stores which both 

 would united, and very likely perish be- 

 fore spring, while, if put together, they 



