1895 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



513 



wood crop, which ends the surplus for the year, 

 must be deposited by the 23d of May. Now, 

 then, brother bee-keepers of Central Iowa, how 

 many swarms would you have in 100 that would 

 have eight frames, or even six, full of brood by 

 May 33? After an experience of 13 years in 

 Iowa I will venture to say that, one year with 

 another, you would not have 25 hives out of IOC 

 that would have even six frames full of brooc 

 by the 1st of June. Some seasons it is so cold 

 during the fore part of May that it is impossi- 

 ble for the bees to care for so much brood at 

 that season. 



Now, in view of these facts how absurd it 

 would be to advocate a ten, twelve, or fifteen 

 frame hive for such a location ! Why, any 

 practical honey-producer can see at once that 

 his surplus would go to fill up those empty 

 combs in that brood-chamber, instead of going 

 into the sections. As for me, I want a brood- 

 chamber for brood, and it must be of a size that 

 an average queen and colony of bees can fill 

 with bees and brood in time to gather the white 

 honey whenever it comes. 



After years of careful study and experiment- 

 ing along this line, with the above-named con- 

 ditions to face, with eight and ten frame hives 

 side by side, I have decided in favor of the 

 eight-frame every time, for comb honey. This 

 is for Central Iowa. On tlae other hand, in a lo- 

 cation where the honey-flow does not come so 

 early in the season, and continues all summer, 

 an entirely different system would have to be 

 practiced. For instance, in the San Joaquin 

 Valley, in California, the surplus is gathered 

 principally from alfalfa and fall weeds, and 

 other flowers ; in fact, nearly every thing that 

 blooms yields honey to some extent; but their 

 swarming is all over long before the harvest be- 

 gins; and the more swarms they can get, the 

 more honey they expect; and the parent colony 

 has plenty of time to build up and get ready for 

 the harvest from alfalfa, which continues to 

 yield during the entire summer, and sometimes 

 even to the first of Novemlser. 



Now, in such a location as this it would be 

 foolishness to advocate an eight-frame hive, for 

 it is very important that the queen be coaxed to 

 lay to her fullest capacity to produce woricers 

 for such a continuous honey- flow. 



No. brother bee-keepers, this subject of large 

 or small brood-chamber hives can never be gov- 

 erned by any fixed rules, but must ever be a 

 matter of location, and time and duration of the 

 honey-flow from whichwe obtain our surplus. 



I will close by saying that I have no pet theo- 

 ry to bolster up, and will use the hive that gives 

 me the best results in the production of honey, 

 every time, if I can find it, and I think I have 

 found it at last; and if this escapes the waste- 

 basket I will at some future time tell the read- 

 ers of this journal the hive I like bestof all, and 

 why. J. E. Hand. 



Wakeman, O., May 15, 1895. 



[This article, it seems to me, states the situa- 

 tion exactly ; and. no mattrr what has been 

 said to the cofitrary. I think locality accounts 

 very largely for the difference in opinion and 

 experience. Indeed, it could hardly be other- 

 wise. Competent and intelligent witnesses have 

 testified in favor of the large or small hive, and 

 from their standpoint and locality we can hard- 

 ly question the soundness of their argument. 

 Why, then, should these good witnesses differ? 

 That little word " locality " explains it all. As 

 I said in an editorial in our last issue, light is 

 surely breaking. While some localities most 

 assuredly require large hives, other localities 

 want nothing larger than the eight-frame size, 

 Langstroth ; and our experience and orders 

 show that a majority of bee-keepers are and 

 have been situated like our friend J. E. Hand, 

 as above. — Ed.] 



BOX OR MODERN MOVABLE -FRAME HIVES. 



WILL BEES STORE MORE HONEY IN THE AGGRE- 

 GATE IN THE ONE THAN IN THE OTHER? 



By C. Davenport. 



In Gleanings for March 15, in one of the 

 editorials we read: "The old statement that 

 bees will store as much honey in an old nail- 

 keg as in the most improved hive still stands 

 practically uncontroverted." Now, I do not 

 know that I can say any thing to controvert 

 that statement; nevertheless, I do not believe 

 that bees will store as much in a nail-keg, or, 

 what is practically the same thing, a box hive, 

 as they will in a modern hive, for I have kept 

 some bees in box hives for a long time, and still 

 have about 30 colonies in such. The largest 

 yield I ever got from a colony in a box hive was 

 about 80 lbs. This was secured by having holes 

 in each side of the hive, over which boxes that 

 would hold 20 lbs. each were fastened. There 

 was also one on top, which they filled twice. I 

 I got them to work in these boxes by fastening 

 pieces of comb in each one. This colony did 

 not swarm that same season, which, by the 

 way, was a good one; in fact, it was the best 

 season for honey that I ever saw. A colony in 

 a 10-frame hive stored 3.37 lbs. in 3-lb. sections — 

 not by guess, but by actual weight. This is 

 the largest yield I ever got from a single colo- 

 ny. I also made four new colonies from this 

 one, and had them in first-class shape for win- 

 ter. It was done in this way: This colony, 

 which was a very strong one, got the swarm- 

 ing-fever just at the beginning of the white- 

 clover flow. I did not wait for them to swarm, 

 but removed all their brood, and gave them 

 frames with only narrow starters of foundation 

 in them. Now, I believe that, according to 

 theory, a colony thus treated should not store 

 any or work in sections until the brood-nest is 

 full. But in actual practice a colony thus 

 treated will, if the super is put on with one or 

 two bait-sections, and the rest filled with full 

 sheets of foundation, go to work in them at 

 once — that is, in a good flow. I took those 

 frames of brood with but very few bees on 

 them, and divided them up into four hives; 



