1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



635 



ver commenced to yield about the 18th or 20th of 

 June; but by the time the bees were in a good con- 

 dition the weather changed and the honey quit 

 coming in. I have been looking in the hives, but I 

 do not find any sealed honey in any of them; but 

 they seem to be setting enough to be rearing some 

 brood. I have the A B C of Bee Culture, but fail to 

 find any thins like the case I have mentioned. If 

 you can explain it to me 1 shall be much obliged. 

 Cheshire, O.. Aug. 8. ^\'. .S. Price. 



[We occasionally hear of a queen that will lay 

 eggs regularly that will not hatch. Cases of this 

 kind will be found in almost every large queen- 

 rearing yard in a season. The queen is structural- 

 ly defective, and should be destroyed and another 

 one put in her place.— Ed.] 



When to Take Off Comb Honey, and How Much 

 to Leave for Winter. 



About three years ago I got a hive of bees which 

 I have increased to three. I am keeping bees to 

 get a little honey for the hbu.se, and not have to buy 

 it. 1 am not in the business for profit except as I 

 have said. I do not want to keep more than four 

 stands. What I want to know is when to take off 

 the honey, if there is any, and how much should I 

 leave for winter? < ine hive has two supers filled 

 with sections, and the other two have a super each. 

 Last year was extremely dry, and I did not get one 

 pound. The sections seemed to be filled with comb 

 but no honey. 



Memphis. Tenn., Sept. 6. F. W. Wright. 



[Comb honey, as a general rule, is taken off as 

 soon as it is capped, or at least as soon as the hon- 

 ey season is over. To leave it on longer would re- 

 sult in the discoloration of the fine pearly-white 

 cappings. It is the general practice among bee- 

 keepers to take off all honey stored in supers. That 

 which is in the brood-nest is usually left. It is 

 much more profitable to take away comb honey or 

 even extracted honey from the supers, and then, if 

 necessary, in the fall to feed up sugar syrup, at less 

 than half the price of the extracted and one-fourth 

 of the price of comb. 



As to the amount, a colony outdoors In your lo- 

 cality ought to have at least 25 lbs. This would 

 mean that there should be between six and seven 

 frames fairly well filled with honey' except a little 

 space in the center combs for a winter nest. In a 

 climate like yours a colony will require more stores 

 than in the States north of you. If bees are to be 

 wintered in the cellar, the cellar being dry and hav- 

 ing a uniform temperature of about 45°, 10 lbs. 

 might be ample, although we usually figure on 

 about 15. For outdoor-wintered colonies in dou- 

 ble-walled hives, near the Great Lakes, we figure 

 that not less than 20 lbs. will be required. — Ed.] 



Uniting Weak Colonies in the Fall. 



Two half-pounds of bees without combs 1 bought 

 have increased to four hives, but one is very weak. 

 If I put the weak hive on top of the stronger, which 

 has my best queen in it. and put a zinc excluder 

 between.will the better queen in the bottom hive be 

 killed? and would the weak colony on top become 

 stronger for fall before being put into the cellar? I 

 can get but very few combs. I can not get them to 

 work out the foundation. I think I should be very 

 successful with bees if I could only get combs. I 

 have fed every day all summer, whether honey 

 was coming in or not. They have not enough to 

 winter on: and without combs I can not feed the 

 syrup, and the hard candy runs down among the 

 bees and kills them, so Gleanings says. 



Keedsburg, Wis.. Sept. 10. Mrs. W. Hayden. 



[It is rather unfortunate to have any weak colo- 

 nies at this time of the year. About all you can do 

 now is to unite them, and in uniting you will have 

 to sacrifice one or more of the queens. It is possi- 

 ble that you may have to unite all four nuclei in 

 order to make one strong color.y. In that case you 

 would use only one queen. Possibly uniting two 

 of the weak ones would be sufficient. You would 

 then have to sacrifice but one queen. It is not 

 practicable to winter two queens together in two 

 separate bunches of bees. Although an expert 

 may be able to do it, you would be likely to lose one 

 of the queens in any event. 



We do not see any reason why you had difficulty 

 in getting combs. If you practice stimulative feed- 



ing — that is. giving half a pint of syrup daily — the 

 queens ought to start laying, and the bees ought to 

 build comb; but it is getting to be so late in the 

 season that it would be impracticable to do much 

 at it now. We should judge that you have not 

 been feeding enough. For particulars regarding 

 uniting we would refer you to the subject of Unit- 

 ing, in the ABC and X Y Z of Bee Culture, or any 

 other standard text-book. — Ed.] 



Running Two Queens in a Hive. 



I have two ten-frame L. hives that I am thinking 

 of putting one on top of the other, with a wood-and- 

 wire excluding honey-board between, and a shallow 

 extracting-super on top of both of the strong colo- 

 nies. Each hive will have a queen. Would two 

 hives so put together store any more honey in the 

 super than they would on separate stands with an 

 extracting-super on each one? I have never tried 

 this plan of putting hives together more than a 

 few days at a time; and from all I could see it 

 seemed the bees were inclined to store a larger per 

 cent of honey in the top brood-chamber. Am I 

 right about It? I notice some complain that one or 

 the other of the queens usually gets killed; but I 

 have never yet lost a queen by so doing. 



When I receive a ten-frame Jumbo hive which I 

 have ordered. I intend to have a tinner make me a 

 piece of screen wire the length and depth of the in- 

 side of the hive, this wire to be fastened in a thin 

 tin franie so it will not take up more than Vs inch 

 of space, and slip it down between the center 

 frames. It extends above the top of the frames 

 merely to touch the corner so the qvieens can not 

 possibly get at each other. My idea is to run two 

 queens in this hive. Do you believe this will work 

 all right? What do you think of such a scheme as 

 this? The thought struck me that two good prolif- 

 ic queens in such a brood-chamber as the Jumbo 

 ought to throw a very strong force of field bees in a 

 super when put out. 



Eldorado, Okla,, Aug. 25. W. R. Ward. 



[You will find this matter of keeping two queens 

 in a hive to check swarming, and at the same time 

 increase the honey crop, very thoroughly discussed 

 in this journal, running through the year 1906. We 

 would refer you particularly to the articles by Mr. 

 A. K. Ferris, beginning April 1 of that year. 



For your present information we may say it is 

 not practicable to have two queens in a colony, 

 even when separated by queen-excluders, except 

 during a honey-flow. After that, and especially in 

 the fall, one of the queens, as a general thing, will 

 be missing. To work two queens in a hive requires 

 a great deal of skill and experience; and even tho.se 

 who know the most about it have apparently given 

 it up, and hence we hear very little about it now. 



Answering your questions specifically, we think 

 either plan will work when honey is coming in 

 freely: but you will probably find that only one 

 queen will be in the hive along toward fall.— Ed.] 



Not Another Species, but Ordinary Robbers. 



Inclosed is a species of robber bee that 1 find in 

 my apiary. Are they caused by laying workers, or 

 are they a wild bee? Some of my neighbors are 

 complaining of these bees robbing their apiaries. 



Percy, 111., .Sept. 7. W. C. Williams. 



[An examination of the dead specimens you sent 

 us does not disclose any thing but the ordinary 

 honey-bees. If there has been robbing in the vi- 

 cinity they are simply ordinary robbers, and should 

 be treated as such. They are not another species, 

 as you seem to infer. They may look like different 

 bees from yours, but a robber bee very often has all 

 the fuzz or hair on its body worn off, simply for the 

 reason that in crowding into entrances, and strug- 

 gling with other bees, it wears off this fuzz. More- 

 over, robbers are generally old bees: and when the 

 fuzz is worn off they look to a beginner like a differ- 

 ent bee.— Ed.] 



Where did the Dark Candied Honey Come from ? 



About the 15th of July, when I was taking off 

 .some section honey I found that all the honey, ex- 

 cept that left from clover, was granulated, resem- 

 bling brown sugar. I took from one colony 27 lb.s. 

 of this sugar-like honey, and the five other sections 

 were not capped over. A little in the cells was not 

 solid. 



I have never seen any thing like this before, and 

 I believe the bees got it from cantaloup-blo.ssoras. 



