100 



GLEANINGt> IN BEE CULTURE. 



Feb. 1. 



They are more easily pried up; and the eiiief 

 iind second reason is, lurning combs over does 

 pay, especially when it is the cause of making 

 th(; bees Hnish a crate of sections, to say no- 

 lliing of being a convenient way to mal<e a 

 ijwarm stay at home when it is put back the 

 next day after swarming: and those solid combs 

 are, beyond dispute, a very great hindrance to 

 swarming, because, without that lower space 

 between the bottom of the comb and bottom- 

 bar, there is no great inducement to build those 

 cups that are such a coaxing inducement to the 

 queen to lay in them, and send things swarm- 

 ing fever fashion. 



A LIMIT TO THE NUMBER OF FRAMES THAT MAY 

 BE USED IN THE HIVE. 



I feel sure— yes, I can say that I know— there 

 is a limit to the practical use of the number of 

 frames used side by side. You have said, 

 '■ While ten frames may give slightly better re- 

 sults, a twelve or sixteen frame brood-nest 

 would give still better results.'" .Just stop, be- 

 fore you, by such insinuations, "make thy 

 brother to err." It takes years to prove such a 

 statement to be practically true. I will admit 

 the twelve; but fourteen I shall watch and 

 wait, doubt and disbelieve, discourage and de- 

 nounce ; and the sixteen I shall discard and 

 condemn. 



Jvight here I will say that there are many 

 who will say to you, "' liring on your queens to 

 till and keep full of brood those twelve-frame 

 hives." Such queens have lived; such queens 

 now do live, and such queens there will be. I 

 have had them live to be four years old. and 

 not so very few of them live Hve years in those 

 thirteen-frame hives, and have kept their work- 

 ers humming each year, so that it made me as 

 well as other persons wonder whether those 

 large hives did not make the queens better than 

 the small hives ; or, in other words, did not 

 those small hives restrict a queen to such an 

 extent that she was in some way injured by a 

 lack of room? How does that strike you? There 

 surely has been some evidence in favor of un- 

 limited space being beneficial; and it is true 

 beyond denial, in all nature, that restricting 

 natural functions is detrimental to both life and 

 health. Larger hives, solid combs, and queens 

 reared out of the swarming season, are the non- 

 swarming climax. 



You may tell Mr. E. V. Quigley, p. <i.51, 1S<.I4, 

 that those very late queens are the least likely 

 to swarm — are tlie steadiest layers, live the 

 longest of any queens, and are the strongest of 

 any, because they are not exhausted while 

 young, in early production. The proof of the 

 pudding is in the eating of it. For years I have 

 raised very late queens entirely, for my own 

 use, and I have written several times about 

 their superiority, although I have never seen 

 the articles in print. 



Woodbury, Ct. 



[I do not know where you get your foundation 



for thinking that I claimed for myself priority 

 on the question of the desirability of large 

 hives. 1 am, and have Oeen, well awai"e that it 

 lias been brought up a iiuiul)i':rof timet- through 

 our back volumes, liut in Jurmir times it was 

 dropped befure any thing deiinite could be ar- 

 rivea at. My purpose has been to focus down 

 the experience of our best bee-men into some- 

 thing more tangible along these lines, and a lit- 

 tle light is beginning to break already, I am 

 thinking. 



You lail to give the whole of the sentence re- 

 garding ten and sixteen iramers you quote, and 

 thus give a wrong impression. 1 said, if you 

 will reler again to page U52, that " 1 am coming 

 more and more to believe that" such would be 

 tlie case. 1 haven't come to that belief yet. 

 The sentence as a whole was suggestive rather 

 than positive, and for the purpose of calling 

 out repons tioiu others ; and among those al- 

 ready received, yours is one. 



As to that •■ cussed nuisance," there may have 

 been some occasion tor it in the case of the old 

 yimplicity hive wnen the space was % of an 

 inch between the end-bars and the ena of the 

 hive. But in the Dovetailed hives, with the 

 space only I4 inch, we have never heard of there 

 being any trouble. Your experience seems to be 

 at variance with thai ox the whole bee-keeping 

 fraternity. .When almost everybody was using 

 the regular Langstroih Irame with its narrow 

 end- bar— narrow clear up— we scarcely heard of 

 burr-combs being deposited back of them, ex- 

 cept where the bee-space was more than >4 of au 

 inch. 



As to the wide part of the Hoffman end-bars, 

 the length that we use is in proportion to the 

 depth 01 frame used oy Hoffman, i have tried 

 them (the wide part) Ueeper, but 1 did not like 

 lUem so. 



Mr. J. has suggested some practical thoughts, 

 although I think he is inclined to put some 

 things overstrong. — Ed. J 



TWO EIGHT-FRAME HIVES NOT MAKING A SUIT- 

 ABLE BROOD-NEST, AND WHY. 



I was much interested in Mr. Chrysler's letter, 

 on page 948. It chimeu in with my experience 

 exactly, so far as my experience goes. 1 ran a 

 dozen colonies last season in two-story eight- 

 frame hives; it worked pretty well until the 

 honey-flow came, and then in some of them 

 there was a marked inequality between the 

 upper and lower stones, and two of them linally 

 confined themselves to a single story — one using 

 the upper story lor brood, and one tlie lower. 



By this time, thanks to your impartial leader- 

 ship, a little light is being shed on the subject 

 — It is not altogether the mystery it formerly 

 was. But there is one thing not yet satisfac- 

 torily presented. Most bee-keepers raise comb- 

 honey, and how in the world is the two-story 

 eight-frame to be recommended to them? 

 There is too much lifting and manipulation 

 connected with it. If the majority of bee- 

 keepers ever get to using brood-chambers of 

 large capacity, I am inclined to think they will 

 "flop" just as Mr. Chrysler did, and as I pro- 

 pose to do. But, let's hear all sides. I would 

 suggest, as the next thing in order, that you get 

 an exhaustive article from E. France, theoreti- 

 cal and practical, on the subject, " Why the 

 two-story eight-frame is to be preferred to all 



