1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



183 



MRS. J. W. BACON'S AUARY OF LARGE HIVES FROM WHICH THERE WERE ONLY FIVE 



SWARMS LAST YEAR. 



SHORT CUTS IN A QUEEN-REARING 

 YARD. 



Putting Bees and Queen into a Mailing- 

 cage to Avoid Stings. 



BY MRS. J. W. BACON. 



I see you have trouble by getting stung 

 when putting up queens to mail I have 

 worked at this for a number of years, and in 

 putting up hundreds of queens this year I 

 had my thumb stung just once. Try it this 

 way: 



Fill the candy-hole, and tack the wire 

 cloth on all except the last hole at the end. 

 Now turn the wire cloth back, not quite half 

 way, and you will have a long narrow space 

 to put your bees in. Hold the cage in the 

 left hand, with the thumb over the opening. 

 Catch the queen first, and the bees by the 

 wings as they have their heads in cells of 

 honey. If you hold the ca^e so the back 

 end is up they will run into the middle space. 



I wear an apron made of factory cloth, 

 with a double pocket — i. e., a small pocket 

 on the outside ot a large one. The small 

 pocket is for tacks and the large one holds 

 my hive-tool, leadpencil, a small wing to 

 brusii bees with, and a dozen queen-cages. 



When catching queens I take along a box 

 with blocks of eggs; and if I find a hive with- 

 out eggs I do not look for a queen, but give 

 them a block of eggs. I can give out eggs 

 and catch a dozen queens in less than an hour. 

 The next time over, or in two or three days, 

 I find queens laying in many hives to which 

 I gave trggs; and if they have started cells I 

 give them a virgin queen; and so it goes, a 

 continual round for the season. 



I use lard on my hands to keep the propo- 



lis from sticking; and if the bees are cross a 

 little honey on the back of my hands seems 

 to quiet them. 



THE ADVANTAGE OF A LARGE HIVE. 



I see that large and small hives are dis- 

 cussed. Ours are about right. They have 

 a tight division-board and chatt' cushion on 

 each side. We winter our bees on eight 

 frames. One can easily make this hive large 

 (fourteen frames) or small, in the spring. 

 The strong colonies are soon ready tor an 

 extra frame, and sometimes we keep putting 

 in frames until they have twelve. When we 

 are ready to put supers on these hives we 

 take out these extra frames of brood, shak- 

 ing otT the bees, and use them to strengthen 

 weak colonies, thus reducing down to eight 

 frames. The bees fill the supers immediate- 

 ly. You see I would not want a hive that 

 could not be made large or small at will. 

 Taking out the brood at this time seems to 

 retard swarming. We had five swarms from 

 sixty colonies last year. 



Waterloo, N. Y. 



[The plan you describe for putting bees 

 in a mailing-cage is all right. We used to 

 employ that method; but it took so much 

 time that we abandoned it in favor of the 

 plan that we described and illustrated. Our 

 boys seem to prefer the faster plan, even if 

 it does result in more stings to their fingers. 



If a colony be given a large amount of 

 breeding capacity, such as can be afforded 

 by a large hive there will be far less swarm- 

 ing than from one where the breeding room 

 is limited. The bee-keeping world has not 

 given this question enough thought and at- 

 tention. Our columns are open to a further 

 discussion of the matter. — Ed.] 



