56 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 1.5. 



I will cheerfully give any further explanation 

 or detailed description of my plan if desired. 

 Troy, Pa., Dec. 11. 



[The idea of having a raised earth floor is 

 capital. It would, as you say, be noiseless; 

 and, being raised above the surrounding 

 ground, it would be dry. I have noticed in our 

 house-apiary, when we walk over the board 

 floor just after opening the door, that there 

 would'be a repsonse in the way of loud hum- 

 ming.— Ed. J 



WHAT SIZE OF BROOD -CHAMBER 1 



IS THE EFFICIENCY OF A COLONY MEASURED 

 BY THE SIZE OF ITS BROOD NEST? WILL A 

 GIVEN COLONY PRODUCE MORE HONEY IN A 

 GIVEN SPACE OF EXTRACTED THAN OF COMB? 



By Dr. C. C. Miller. 



That belated footnote on page 779, 189.5, has 

 interested me very much, and I've studied over 

 it a good deal. One point of special interest is 

 that you say in the three-story hives with 

 brood in twelve or fourteen frames you got 

 much more honey in proportion than from colo- 

 nies having two stories and the queen confined 

 wholly to the lower story. Nearly every year 

 for several years I have had in each apiary one 

 or two colonies used as a sort of reservoir, in 

 which were put frames of brood or honey to be 

 taken care of. and to be drawn upon whenever 

 needed. These "piles," as we called them, 

 would run up three and four stories high, and 

 it always seemed to me that they stored more 

 honey in proportion to the number of bees than 

 other colonies; and, like your'" hummers," not 

 one of the " piles " ever offered to swarm. But 

 then, one reason for their not swarming may 

 have been that they were weak colonies at the 

 beginning of the harvest— too weak to take sec- 

 tions, and their growing strong was a work of 

 degrees. 



Against the view that room alone prevented 

 swarming, stands the fact that, in the past sea- 

 son, preparations for swarming were made in 

 colonies having two stories, one of the stories 

 being very little occupied, and no excluder be- 

 tween. 



It would be a very nice thing if we could be 

 sure that the efficiency of a colony could be def- 

 initely measured by the amount of room al- 

 lowed the queen for breeding; and for extracted 

 honey I'm not sure that I ever saw objections 

 made by American bee-keepers to allowing un- 

 limited breeding-room. But in the German 

 journals I have more than once seen the state- 

 ment that, in certain seasons, the colonies which 

 had unlimited breeding-room gave no surplus, 

 while those with limited room for breeding gave 

 a surplus. That makes me just a little afraid 

 that sometimes such large breeding-space may 

 be detrimental. I have, however, never seen 

 any evidence to that effect in my experience. 



You say, "In '"unning for comb honey the 



case is so diff'erent that I think I should try to 

 confine the queen to the lower story." I know 

 it is the orthodox thing to consider that comb- 

 honey rules have little or nothing in common 

 with the rules for extracted honey; but in many 

 cases it seems something of a puzzle to me why 

 there should be such a difference. Take your 

 hummers. With the queen spreading herself 

 in two stories, and only two combs in those two 

 stories without brood, you got a lot of extracted 

 honey — more than you would have done if the 

 queen had been confined to the lower story. 

 You could have taken very little honey from 

 the second story unless you took it from combs 

 containing brood, and nowadays it isn't consid- 

 ered the best practice to put into the extractor 

 combs containing brood. So it is perhaps fair 

 to conclude that you got the honey mainly from 

 the upper story, and that you would have got 

 about the same results if you had extracted 

 from the upper story alone. 



Now, the question that puzzles me is this: If 

 letting the queen have two stories below gave 

 more extracted honey in the third story, why 

 shouldn't it give more comb honey in the same 

 story ? Just explain that to me if you can. 



It has been unfortunate for me that the past 

 two seasons have been seasons of utter failure, 

 so that, so far as experience goes, I am but lit- 

 tle in advance of where I stood in the year 1893; 

 but from what little experience I have had, and 

 from watching with intense interest the testi- 

 mony of others, I feel pretty sure that, to con- 

 fine a queen to eight frames for the whole year, 

 is not the best thing. With only eight frames 

 a good queen will not develop so strong a force 

 of bees as she will with more. 



One of the questions yet unanswered is, wheth- 

 er it is better to allow the same number of 

 frames all the year through, or to limit the 

 queen during the harvest. Another is, whether 

 it is just as well to have twelve or more combs 

 in two stories as to have them spread horizon- 

 tally in a single story. 



I have eight colonies in eleven-frame hives, 

 and the rest in eight-frame hives. Until I have 

 different light from what I now have, my prac- 

 tice shall be to let the queen have all the room 

 she will occupy before and after the honey- 

 harvest ; and until I know more about it, most 

 of the eight-framers will be reduced to one sto- 

 ry during harvest; but for the sake of compari- 

 son some will have two stories during harvest. 

 .Of course, all of this is on the supposition that I 

 shall live long enough for a honey-harvest to 

 come around this way once more. 



FRAME-SPACERS. 



Now for the footnote on page 770. With two 

 months more of experience, and that through 

 the worst of the year for propolis, I am very de- 

 cided in the opinion that I like best, of any 

 frames I have ever tried, those with all parts, 

 top, end, and bottom bars, the same width, and. 



