Novemlber, ipil. 



American Hee Journal 



foundation, so that every nucleus super 

 thus made would contain one nice queen- 

 cell 1 shallow frames with brood, honey, 

 and'bees, and one frame with comb founda- 

 tion Then 1 would put the covers on the 

 supers so prepared, and remove them some- 

 where in the woods to hatch and mate the 

 Queens. Will that work ? After I had taken 

 the supers from the breeding hives. I would 

 take all the 4 double hives away from their 

 stand in the bee-house, put in their place a 

 new empty hive with one-inch starters only, 

 and put 2 supers filled with foundation baits 

 and starters to every empty hive, and shake 

 all the double hives to every old stand, and 

 put more supers on whenever necessary; 

 but I don't know what to do with the bee- 

 less brood, as I work for comb honey and 

 have no extractor. I don't care to put this 

 brood on some weak colony. tha_t would re- 

 duce my comb-honey supply. Could I put 

 them on top of the supers on every hive with 

 bee-escape board, and above the bee-escape 

 put the beeless brood on the 2 hives until 

 they all emerge, in 21 days ? W ill they hatch 

 without bees, or would it be better to de- 

 stroy the brood and make the combs into 

 wax' as I have no use for full combs? Ur. 

 Phil'lips and Walter S. Ponder say that 

 shaking swarms on full combs or full sheets 

 of foundation is a failure: but that inch 

 starters are the right thing to use. 



4 .After I have emptied the old brood- 

 combs 1 could cut them off so as to leave 

 only one-inch starter or cells on the frames 

 for next year. Will that be all right, or do 

 you know any better plan of disposing of 

 those beeless combs of brood, when one 

 doesn't care for extracted honey ? , 



-^ Last spring I bought 15 select tested 

 golden Italian queens, and I lost 3 when in- 

 troducing them They were expensive 

 queens, but I wanted pure-bred bees. But 



1 see now. to my sorrow, that all the sur- 

 rounding bees are black drones. How can 1 

 keep my queens pure in such a place. It 1 

 had known this before I would have bought 

 cheaper queens. lam afraid the next gen- 

 eration will be hybrids again. 



6 The queen-breeder from whom I bought 

 the queens wrote that his queens were « 

 months old when I got them, which was in 

 May loii. Will they be good for the season 

 of i<Ji3..or must I supersede them in the fall 



7 "win shallow extracting frames fit in 

 any of the dovetailed lo-frame supers, or 

 are there extra supers for them ? 



8. Is there any way to extract honey with- 

 out an extractor and not injure the combs ! 

 Wisconsin. 



Answers.-i. Generally the bees will feed 

 the queen although no candy be in the cage. 

 But conditions make a difference. !'• '" a 

 hive having a layingqueen. you cage another 

 queen, the queen in the cage may be neg- 

 lected, especially if she is a virgin. In gen- 

 eral, a laying queen is more sure to be ted 

 than a virgin. If you cage a queen in a col- 

 ony that has been queenless for as niuch as 



2 or 3 days, you may feel easy that she will 

 be fed 



2 Yourproposal to kill the queen in one 

 story and 2 days later unite another story 

 with a queen in it. ought to work. You can 

 make it still more sure by putting a sheet ot 

 newspaper between the 2 stones, for that 

 will prevent the strange bees from getting 

 at the queen immediately. In the case you 

 mention, if I understand correctly, you 

 united immediately after killing the queen 

 without waiting the 2 days. Then you tried 

 the flour, but that was hardly a fair lest, for 

 after the queen had been balled the bees 

 would not accept her so readily as if she 

 had been floured and given before the ball- 



3 Vou can not rely upon the bees with a 

 laying queen below to start cells over an ex- 

 cluder. They may start one or two. and 

 they may start not a cell. If you get enough 

 cells started, the scheme with grass stuffed 

 into the entrance will work; but it will also 

 work at home without you taking the nuclei 

 to the woods. But the rest of your plan will 

 not work so well. If you use only inch start- 

 ers. I'll guarantee that you will have a great 

 deal more drone-comb built than you will 

 like. If you leave the brood without any 

 bees, much of it may be chilled and lost. If 

 you put the brood over the section-supers, 

 the sections will be likely to be darkened 

 with bits of old comb from above. 



4. I don't believe you would gain anything 

 by cutting away all but an inch of the comb. 

 I would rather use the full comb. Besides, 

 as already intimated, the bees will be sure 

 to build a lot of drone comb if you cut the 

 comb away and leave them to build it down 

 afresh. You could pile up several stories of 

 the brood, giving with it a few bees to take 

 care of it. and reduce it to one story in 3 



weeks, and with a laying queen you would 

 have a good working colony. Or. you could 

 add the bees to one of the other colonies. 



5. I don't know of any way to keep Italians 

 pure with black drones all around you. 



6. Likely some of them may be still good in 

 1013. and some of them not. 



7. They will fit all right if the depth is 

 right. 



8. No, you can not extract without an ex- 

 tractor. 



Labeling Extracted Honey 



1. Is it against the law to sell extracted 

 honey without labeling the jars ? 



2. How should a label be printed ? 



3. Could you give me the address of some 

 company that prints labels ? Minnesota. 



Answers.— I. No. the law does not require 

 a label. 



2. The label may be printed any way you 

 like, just so that it does not mislead. You 

 may have the word "HONEY " with your 

 name as producer, with nothing added, or 

 you may add some instruction about keep- 

 ing honey or melting it when it granulates. 



3. You can get them from the A. 1. Root 

 Co.. Medina. Ohio. 



Wintering Bees— Uniting Colonies— Bee-Literature 



1. Will a small colony winter better in a 

 hive of 5 or 6 frames than to leave them on 

 the entire amount of frames in the hive ? 



2. As I winter my bees on the summer 

 stands. I would like to know if cold sides 

 and warm covers would be better than pack- 

 ing all around the hive ? 



3. When uniting, do you leave any combs 

 in the hive above the newspaper, or do you 

 use an empty hive-body so the bees will go 

 down quickly ? 



4. I had a first swarm wait until the young 

 queen began piping before coming out. 

 Was there anything wrong about this? I 

 know that after-swarms do this about every 

 time, but I thought it queer for a prime 

 swarm. 



5. If a colony is extra-large, how large 

 should the hive-entrance be ? 



b. I have read your " Forty Years .Among 

 the Bees." and am a subscriber to the 

 American Bee Journal and another bee- 

 paper. What book would you now advise 

 me to read ? West Virginia. 



Answers.— I. Yes. the less empty space 

 the bees have to keep warm the better. 



2. It is of more importance to have warm 

 packing on top than at the sides, for if mois- 

 ture condenses overhead it will fall in drops 

 upon the bees, while moisture dripping 

 down the sides of tl\e hive would not do the 

 same harm. But in very cold localities it is 

 well to have the sides warm also, having the 

 warmest packing on top. .^s we get farther 

 south, there is less need for packing at the 

 sides. As far south as you are I don't know 

 whether it would make any difference. 



3. It doesn't matter whether empty combs 

 are left in the upper story or not. The bees 

 will unite just as quickly with or without 

 them. Of course, after the bees have had 

 time to unite, the 2 stories are reduced to 

 one. the best combs of the two stories being 

 selected to fill the one story. 



4. Normally a prime swarm issues about 

 the time the first queen cell is sealed, and of 

 course there could be no piping at this time. 

 In your case it is likely that in some way the 

 old queen was lost, and the bees would have 

 to wait until a young queen was ready to 

 swarm with them, and she would pipe just 

 the same as a young queen with any after- 

 swarm. 



5. Full width of the hive. 



6. Hard to say wliicli should come first, 

 but you will no doubt gain from any of the 

 other good books. 



Crippled Queens— Moving Bees Swarming 



I. All I know about bees I learned from 

 books. I am practically all theory, as I have 

 never seen anybody handle bees excepting 

 farmers that use " inverted beer-boxes for 

 hives." so I don't know much about handling 

 them. Last year I wanted to make consid- 

 erable increase, so I made preparation to 

 rear queen-cells by the Uoolittle plan. 

 When the cells were all capped over I 

 grafted one or twoon eachcomb of the same 

 super they were reared in after the bees 

 had stuck them fast. I made 10 nuclei con- 

 sisting of one frame of brood, bees and 

 queen-cell, then I added several frames of 

 sealed brood to each nuclei. Every queen 

 hatched all right, but they all hatched crip- 



ples, and were unable to fly and be mated 

 The bees tolerated them for a few days and 

 then threw them out of the entrance dead. 

 The rest of the brood that was reared 

 in the same upper story as the queen-cells 

 was all right. Why were the queens all 

 cripples ? 



2. This fall I moved, and took my bees with 

 me. a distance of 140 miles from New York 

 to Connecticut. They had a wagon-ride of 

 10 miles at either end. and a 120-mile boat- 

 ride. The bottom-boards and covers were 

 removed and a wire-screen put on top and 

 bottom. While I was unpacking them the 

 robber-bees were very numerous. They 

 were there in droves, and the more I un- 

 packed the more robbers there were. The 

 last colony I unpacked was a very strong 

 one. and swarmed out while I was unpack- 

 ing it. It refused to be hived in any kind of 

 a hive. I tried empty combs, full combs of 

 brood and honey, and full sheets ot founda- 

 tion. At the end of i days I hived it in the 

 same hive it came from. I had a "beauti- 

 ful" time trying to keep the robbers out of 

 the hive of the colony that had swarmed. 

 W^hat made them swarm ? New York. 



Answers. — i. My answer can be only a 

 guess. The first guess is that when you 

 wanted to get the bees off the cells, you 

 shook them off. and th*" shaking of the cells 

 crippled the queens. It is also possible that 

 you formed the nuclei as soon as the cells 

 were sealed, and the young queens, at that 

 time, being very delicate were chilled in the 

 nuclei. It is also possible that the cells 

 were attached to tiie combs too near the 

 edge, where they would not be in the cluster 

 of bees, and so they were chilled. 



2. It is likely that the bees swarmed out in 

 the first place because excited and heated, 

 having been shut up, and being very strong, 

 especially if the weather was warm. Then, 

 afterward, they may have swarmed out the 

 same as swarms so often do. possibly with 

 no good reason^that one could see. and pos- 

 sibly because Itlie hive was too close. If 

 they had been put into the cellar until 

 cooled off. it might have helped. 



Dividing vs. Swarming 



I am a resident of New York city and keep 

 a few colonies of bees in my back yard. 

 They are often made a nuisance by swarm- 

 ing, and then clustering in one of my neigh- 

 bor's yards. Could you enlighten me with 

 any plan by which I could divide the colo- 

 nies and thus keep them from flying P 



New York. 



Answer. —If you keep the wings of the 

 queens clipped, it will probably help no lit- 

 tle. For in that case they would generally 

 return to their old place without settling. 

 You may also practise shake-swarming. 

 Look into the hives every week or 10 days, 

 and operate when you find queen-ceils 

 started. Take away all the combs except 

 one with perhaps the least brood in. replac- 

 ing them with empty combs or frames filled 

 with foundation. The brood taken away 

 may be used to strengthen weak colonies, 

 or it may be piled up several stories high 

 over other colonies. After it has been piled 

 up a week or more, you can use it to make 

 new colonies if you wish increase. 



Rearing VS. Buying Queens 



I have had one year's experience with 

 bees, and I like the work very much. I had 

 a chance to buy ,soo colonies at a discount, 

 so I bought them. I have had them almost 2 

 years. 1 do not know much about requeen- 

 ing. I took off 2800 pounds of honey this 

 year. 



Which would be better for me to do about 

 requecning, hire some one to requeen for 

 me, and I work right with them, or should I 

 send away and get some queens and intro- 

 duce them myself? I would like to learn 

 more about requeening. I want to have all 

 the bees I can look after and do nothing else, 

 then run for extracted honey. Arizona. 



Answer.— I don't know enough to say 

 whether it would be better for you to rear 

 your own queens or to buy them. But I can 

 tell you some of the things I think it will be 

 best to do in your case. 



First, you should inform yourself as far as 

 you can during the next few months by read- 

 ing all you can in books and papers about 

 queen-rearing. I especially commend to 

 you Doolittle's ".Scientific Queen-Rearing." 

 and about 30 pages of "Fifty Years Among 

 the Bees," beginning on page 234 The 

 knowledge thus obtained will be of much 



