1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



485 



(.ITY Al'lAKV OF UHAKl.EiS 11. UOODELL, WORCESTKK, MASS. 



KEEPING BEES IN A CITY. 



BY CHARLES H. GOODEL,L. 



I live in a city of nearly 150,000 people. 

 My lot is 120 feet in front, 150 feet deep, and 

 about 50 feet across the back. I have kept 

 bees in the rear part of it for many years, 

 and also have kept several colonies summer 

 and winter in a gable in my attic. There 

 are gardens all around. One can see in the 

 picture how near the houses are, and also 

 the neighbor who is hoeing corn just beyond 

 the fence which forms the boundary be- 

 tween us. 



It is of the double-brood-chamber hives 

 that I write especially. They are made up 

 of regular deep supers, with the cover of a 

 wintering-case on top for a shade-board. 

 The one on the right had two bodies filled 

 with ten frames each, and three supers, and 

 from it I took 71 lbs. of honey; the other, 

 at the left, had two bodies filled with frames 

 and two supers, and from that I took 46 full 

 sections. The season for surplus was short 

 and poor. 



I put a gray Carniolan queen in the up- 

 per story, and an Italian queen in the lower 

 story of the hive at the right, with an ex- 

 cluder between them, and the black and 

 yellow bees worked together throughout the 

 hive during the summer. I hatched a yel- 

 low queen in the upi)er story of the hive on 

 the left of the picture, and then put her in 

 the lower chamber to be mated. I put pa- 

 per between the two chambers, with an en- 

 trance for both stories, until she was laying, 

 to keep the virgin queen from going through 

 the excluder to the oiher queen. I had two 

 queens in each hive after July 1. 



lam a lawjer, anil studying or experi- 

 menting with bees has been my diversion. 

 I also organized and am now secretary of 

 the Worcester County Bee-keepers' Associ- 

 ation, Ihe largest and most influential body 



of the kind in New England. Our presi- 

 dent, Mr. John L. Byard, recently carried a 

 queen-cell in his pocket from Chesterfield, 

 X. H., to his home in Marlborough, Mass., 

 where it hatched in due course. 



Mr, (). F. Fuller, of Blackstone, one of 

 our members, has established the Fuller 

 system of queen-rearing at the Massachu- 

 setts Agricultural College at Amherst. By 

 his system he raises queens in one half of a 

 ten-frame I^angstroth hive, while the queen 

 is laying regularly, and the workers are rear- 

 ing brood in the other half and storing sur- 

 plus in the super above, they having access 

 to the whole hive through queen-excluding 

 zinc placed vertically in the middle, and 

 being fed abundantly when there is no 

 honey-flow. 



I am using the double-brood-chamber 

 hives again this year. Mr. Fuller recently 

 sent me some queen-cells by mail. I was 

 not in my office when they were delivered, 

 and the postman threw them over the tran- 

 som. I put one in my queen-rearing nu- 

 cleus; and next morning I found a hand- 

 some queen had hatched. I put another in 

 I he upper story of a hive, with excluder and 

 wire cloth between that and ihe lower story 

 in which the queen is, and that cell also 

 hatched out in good time. We have dem- 

 onstiated that queen-cells will hatch after 

 being sent for some distance and subjected 

 to rough usage in the mails. 



Worcester, Mass., July 11. 



[We are fearful that your experiments in 

 s-ending queen-cells by mail will end disas- 

 trously, for unless the weather is extremely 

 warm there is the greatest danger that the 

 (jueens will become chilled so that they will 

 not develop perfectly. Our Mr. Bain says 

 that, since the wings form about the last, 

 the queen is likely to emerge without wings 

 at all if the cell is subjected to a cooler tem- 

 perature than that of the hive. — Ed.] 



