164 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 1. 



solution; and if we are to follow the advocates 

 of one or the other, we must consider our own 

 locality compared with theirs. Perhaps I 

 ought to say that the Dadants have a much 

 better and more prolonged fall flow of honey 

 than those who advocate a smaller size of hives. 

 With the latter it is not desirable to have a 

 large force of bees after the honey-flow, to be 

 consumers and practically nothing else.— Ed.] 



ten-frame hives, more honey and fewer 

 swarms; eight frames, less honey 



AND MORE swarms. 



My hives are all eight frames but one. I 

 have endeavored to follow carefully in the 

 footsteps of the majority, notwithstanding the 

 fact that my one ten-frame hive did just as 

 well as the eight, and never swarmed, and the 

 fact that my neighbors with ten frames get 

 more honey than I. In fact, for three or four 

 years I have been looking for some big report 

 from eight-frame in Gleanings and Review; 

 but the big reports for some reason all seem to 

 come from the ten-frame hive. I am sure that 

 I have lost money and honey in runaway 

 swarms from my small hives. I am confident 

 that, with ten-frame hives and high shade, I 

 shall have non-swarming bees, and shall not 

 have to be always anxious about a shortage of 

 honey in the hives. No more small hives for 

 me at present. Newton Amerman. 



Rice Lake, Wis., Feb. 4. 



[I thought this would be a good item to put 

 right after the article above; for. indeed, it 

 confirms the position of Mr. Hatch when he 

 had to fight single-handed.— Ed. J 



CHAFF VS. DEAD-AIR SPACE. 



not an eight or ten frame hive, but a 

 combination of both. 



By C. W. Dautim. 



In a back number of Gleanings I find the 

 assertion that there will be more bees reared in 

 an eight-frame hive because it is warmer. I 

 believe the bees form what is known as an " in- 

 side hive." By this is meant that, around the 

 margins of brood, the bees arrange themselves 

 in such solid lines between the combs as to 

 prevent a circulation of air from within or 

 without the cluster, for the purpose of keeping 

 a high temperature there while they allow the 

 rest of the hive to arrange its own temperature; 

 consequently, in cold weather the walls are 

 often coated with frost; and in Southern Cali- 

 fornia, where frosts seldom come, we find the 

 walls and unoccupied combs dripping with 

 moisture. From this it would seem that the 

 ten-frame hive is actually warmer than the 

 eight, as the cluster of bees and brood would 

 be able to locate farther from the outside walls. 

 Even if the cluster was warm enough and near 

 enough to the walls to dispel the moisture or 

 frost it would require warmth to do it, and such 

 warmth would disappear in the operation, and 



could not aid in brood-rearing, as where there 

 is no frost to be dispelled. 



In Iowa I wintered bees in a room which was 

 constructed entirely within a cellar. There 

 was a beam extending from the outdoor air to 

 the inside room. As the cold increased, the 

 frost began to creep down that beam, inch by 

 inch, until it finally reached the inside room. 

 Then when the weather became warmer the 

 frost retreated up the beam. The farther the 

 inside room was from the outside wall, the 

 more secure from frost. The thermometer said 

 so. Would not this inside room correspond to 

 the inside hive of a colony of bees, and the out- 

 er wall represent the outside hive? But the 

 inside hive, of which we speak, is of the same 

 size, whether the outside hive be adapted to 

 eight, ten, or twelve frames. The more frames 

 in the outside hive, the longer beam would 

 there be required between the outside and in- 

 side cellar walls. In the large hive there is a 

 wall of wood and a wall of dead air. Will any 

 contend that six inches of chaff packing is no 

 better than two inches of the same material? 

 But it is a mooted question which is warmer- 

 chaff or the space filled with dead air. Where 

 a colony fills the hive, as is likely to be the con- 

 dition in the eight-frame si/.e, there is the pro- 

 tection of the outer wall only, when, with a 

 hive of greater width, a dead-air space occurs. 

 The more dead air, the more protection. If the 

 whole interior of the brood-chamber were to be 

 kept warm, then the less dead-air space the 

 better. Mr. Langstroth designed to have the 

 winter stores deposited in the rear end of the 

 brood-frames. At that early date it seems to 

 have been known that the long frame was long- 

 er than necessary for the accommodation of the 

 brood. It might not be so very bad to have 

 the winter stores in one end of the frames were 

 it not that, a little later on, we j/iu.sf have a 

 share of the working force of bees lodged there 

 instead of above in the supers of sections, 

 where they should be. Eight long Langstroth 

 frames have the capacity of sixty-four 4J4x4>4' 

 sections. Eight crosswise frames contain 48 

 sections— a difference of sixteen. These sixteen 

 sections would fill 2-:j of the crosswise frames. 

 Let the two-thirds of a frame go while we set 

 one of the whole frames on each side of the 

 original eight, and it results in a ten-frame 

 hive with brood in eight combs instead of the 

 old eight-frame hive with brood in only six, and 

 that much exposed at the remote points of the 

 brood-sphere. There might be a comb of pollen 

 also. Since it is admitted that the two outside 

 combs in any hive are not occupied with brood, 

 there would be only four or five brood-combs 

 in the eight-frame hive, while there were six or 

 seven in the ten-frame hive, resulting in more 

 early bees and a more populous hive later on, to 

 send bees into the supers. It would be like a 

 light-weight and a heavy-weight pugilist, both 

 in the same ring; that is, the ten-frame colony 



