GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Nov. ir. 



THOSE "MOVING PICTURES" FOR GLEAN- 

 INGS. 



In this issue we give the first of our series 

 of "moving pictures," showing Mr. S. D. 

 Chapman in the act of hiving a swarm of 

 bees. In our next we shall show Mr. R. F. 

 Holtermann in the act of carrying his bees 

 to the cellar. His method of picking up 

 his big twelve-frame hives is simple and 

 easy, and we shall show our friend in the 

 act of handling those big hives. 



The fact is, he made us a short visit at 

 Medina this fall; and while here we availed 

 ourselves of the opportunity of catching him 

 in a series of "moving pictures." He then 

 suggested that his method of carrying bees 

 into the cellar, or carrying them out, for 

 that matter, might prove helpful to our 

 readers. We hunted up a twelve-frame hive 

 and caught him in several poses. 



We regret that we were unable to get the 

 matter before our readers in an earlier issue. 

 AVhile most bees will be in the cellar by 

 Dec. 1, the information will be valuable in 

 showing how to take bees out of the cellar. 



In our Dec. 15th issue we shall show not 

 only E. D. Townsend but others in "mov- 

 ing-picture" acts. From that time on, the 

 "moving-pictures" will be a special feature 

 of Gleanings throughout the year. 



It is unnecessary to repeat right here that, 

 when we say "moving pictures," we mean a 

 series of snapshots showing each separate 

 step in any operation. The object of these 

 pictures is to show how to perform many of 

 I the manipulations in a bee-yard to the bus^ y 

 man who has not the time to read through 

 a long description. 



EIGHT OR TEN FRAME HIVES; A PLEA FOR 



STANDARDIZATION IN HIVES AND 



SHIPPING-CASES. 



Elsewhere in this issue, page 730, our old 

 correspondent R. C. Aikin goes into quite 

 an extended discussion of this question, and 

 finally winds up with a plea for two brood- 

 chambers of eight-frame I^angstroth capaci- 

 ty, one placed on top of the other. Our 

 older readers will remember that, about 

 twelve or fifteen years ago, we advocated 

 this very thing; that is, we took the ground 

 that the eight-frame brood-nest was not 

 large enough for a good vigorous queen; 

 that we found it an advantage to run our 

 comb-honey colonies in two eight-frame 

 bodies up until the main honey-flow was 

 on. We then removed one of the stories, 

 placing most of the brood in the brood- 

 chamber left on the old stand. The other 

 combs were then distributed among colonies 

 not up to comb-honey pitch- This neces- 

 sarily left a very large force of bees that 

 could hardly be accommodated in the one 

 brood-nest. By giving one or two supers, 

 one of them an extracting-super and the 

 other a comb-honey super, we were able to 

 accommodate all the bees. The colony 

 would immediately go to work in the ex- 

 tracting-super, and as soon as it was nicely 

 started this was taken away, when the bees 



were forced to go to work in the sections. 

 Sometimes an extra comb-honey super was 

 given, and sometimes the colony was al- 

 lowed to have only one super. 



The plan worked beautifully. We secured 

 tremendously strong colonies, and that is 

 just what every comb-honey producer knows 

 we must have for the production of comb 

 honey. But we found in later years that 

 two ten-frame brood-chambers can be work- 

 ed in the same way, and the result will be 

 just as satisfactory. While it may be ar- 

 gued that twenty frames is too much for 

 any queen, we may also say that a sixteen- 

 frame capacity is also too large for the aver- 

 age good queen. But the tendency nowa- 

 days is more and more toward the produc- 

 tion of extracted. The general public is be- 

 ginning to have confidence in the purity of 

 honey in the liquid form. Before the enac- 

 ment of national and State pure-food laws, 

 many people would not buy extracted hon- 

 ey, fearing that they were paying a big 

 jirice for a lot of tasteless glucose or corn 

 syrup; but during the later years all this is 

 changed. Certainly the ten-frame is better 

 than the eight-frame hive for extracted hon- 

 ey. Since honey is becoming more and 

 more popular, why not get into the band- 

 wagon of ten-frame-hive users? 



We have also observed that the average 

 beginner and farmer bee-keeper will do bet- 

 ter with a ten-frame hive than with an 

 eight-frame — certainly better if he works a 

 single brood-chamber to the colony. We 

 notice, too, that the majority of large pro- 

 ducers are working over to the ten-frame 

 size. If they have not already changed, 

 they virtually say that, if they were to start 

 again, they would adopt the ten-frame rath- 

 er than the eight-frame. There are some 

 others who say that the ten-frame is not big 

 enough, and that they must have 12's. To 

 accommodate these latter people, ten-frame 

 Jumbo hives were made, the same in every 

 respect as the Langstroth, with this excep- 

 tion: The frames are 2>^ inches deeper, 

 making an equivalent of twelve-frame 

 J^angstroth standard-depth capacity. 



There come times in seasons when a sin- 

 gle brood-chamber will give better results 

 than one brood-chamber on top of another 

 for the purpose of securing a large brood- 

 nest. It is then that a ten-frame hive 

 stands out clearly ahead of a single eight- 

 frame brood-chamber. 



Another thing, during all these years we 

 learned that the colonies in the eight-frame 

 hives very often go into winter quarters 

 very short of stores, when ten-frame hives 

 would have enough. Over and over again 

 we have had to caution beginners who were 

 using the Danzenbaker hive, which is the 

 same capacity as the eight frame Dovetail- 

 ed, to make sure that their colonies have 

 sufficient stores to carry them through the 

 winter. On the other hand, an ordinary 

 ten-frame capacity will usually have enough 

 if there is any kind of fall flow to carry the 

 bees through at least until the next spring 

 or until the next flow comes on. 



