1896 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



427 



though this rather crowded them, they stayed 

 all right. The mother colonies had in the 

 meantime all raised young queens; and on the 

 10th of July I proceeded to unite the swarms 

 and mother colonies, as I did not desire any in- 

 crease, and was in hopes that these rousing 

 double colonies would make a good showing in 

 the fall. This had been my plan from the very 

 first. 



Now, this uniting is a very interesting part 

 of the program. la the beginning I had some 

 misgivings as to how the queens would be 

 treated. I therefore began cautiously, and with 

 a few hives at a time. I would remove the old 

 queen from the swarm, then hunt up the young 

 one in the old brood-chamber, and put her un- 

 der a small wire-cloth cage, leaving it to the 

 bees to release her by gnawing away the comb 

 from under the cage. I would then lift the 

 swarm from the stand, place the mother colony 

 on it, put a queen-excluding honey-board on 

 the old brood-chamber, and the'now queenless 

 swarm on top. I soon saw, however, that the 

 hunting and caging of queens took too much 

 time, and started robbing, as no honey was 

 coming in at the time. Besides this, it would 

 necessitate another opening of the brood-cham- 

 ber later on to remove the cages. So, after 

 treating about 8 hives in this way I concluded 

 to take what I considered a rather desperate 

 chance. I would remove the old queen out of 

 the swarm, then lift the swarmlnghive from 

 the stand, place the old brood-chamber on it, 

 without caging the queen or even touching a 

 comb, and at once put the swarm on top over a 

 queen-excluder. 



After treating a number of colonies this way, 

 I waited a few days, and then examined tnem 

 to see how the queens had been received. To 

 my joy I found every queen in the hiv '', treat- 

 ed in the latter way, perfectly at home. There 

 had been no quarreling whatever among the 

 workers. Of the seven or eight queens that I 

 had caged, however, there were several lost. 

 The hunting-up and caging of the queens had 

 evidently stirred up the bees too much, so that 

 they killed the queens in a number of cases after 

 releasing them from the cage. Thereafter I 

 united all that remained, without caging the 

 queens, and did not lose one out of all treated 

 in that way. Moreover, in three hives I per- 

 mitted the bees to retain their queens in both 

 the old brood-chamber and swarming-hive on 

 top, with only the queen-excluder between 

 them, and all the bees using only the one en- 

 trance; and they stayed that way for several 

 months. During that time they were hauled 

 from the out-yard to the home yard, and I 

 opened the hives a number of limes and hunted 

 up the queens. Late in the fall I remove one 

 of the queens from each hive. It was, indeed, 

 a pleasant surprise to me to see how easily 

 those bees were united. In one case the mother 



colony had lost the queen they had reared; and 

 as I thought they had a queen, I left them 

 alone until they had developed laying workers, 

 and had a lot of drone brood. I simply put the 

 swarming-hive, containing the old queen, on 

 top without queen-excluder, and the queen was 

 received, and the laying workers disappeared 

 at once. 



As the brood hatched from the swarming- 

 hlves, I at first intended to shake out the bees, 

 cut out the combs to make wax of them, and 

 prepare the frames and shallow hives to repeat 

 the brushing-off process again at the beginning 

 of the fall honey-flow. The prospect, after the 

 summer drouth, was so unpromising, however, 

 that I did this only so as to try it on two colo- 

 nies. Both filled the shallow hives with comb, in 

 spite of the poor honey-flow, but did very little 

 in the sections. This could not be expected. The 

 old hives raised queens again, but did not gath- 

 er enough for winter. With a little feeding, 

 however, they wintered finely. The swarm 

 was, of course, doubled back on to the old brood- 

 chamber late in the fall, after having its queen 

 removed; and after all the brood was hatched, 

 the combs were removed and again cut out to 

 render into wax. Of these two colonies, one is 

 at present among ihe best in my yard, and the 

 other a good average. This sweeping the bees 

 twice in a season, and letting them build new 

 combs which are designed for the rendering- 

 pot, is a distinctive feature of the plan of man- 

 agement I shall hereafter pursue. It will give 

 fine surplus honey, if there is any to be had, 

 and a large crop of wax in connection with the 

 production of comb honey. It does away with 

 swarming, and increase of colonies is complete- 

 ly optional with the apiarist. I will yet state, 

 that, for best success, each colony ought to have 

 allotted to it two of those shallow swarming- 

 hives— one to be used in spring, the other in 

 fall. You maty get along with one for both 

 seasons, but it will crowd work too much. 



Terre Haute, Ind. 



[If I understand you correctly, you shake, or, 

 rather, "sweep," all of the bees out of the 

 parent colony in front of the new hive, and 

 make them crawl in as they do in the case of a 

 swarm; that this crawling-in satisfies their 

 craving, somewhat, if they have any, for 

 swarming, and that, as a consequence, they do 

 not swarm. 



I notice you say you shake all of the bees out 

 of the hive, and then turn the parent hive , 

 around with its entrance in the opposite di- 

 rection. Of courst;, this sacrifices the young 

 unsealed brood; but in the mean time I should 

 imagine that robbers might make trouble, or 

 somtithing might happen to the brood, until 

 such a time as the bees already hatched out 

 would be old enough to stand guard at the en- 

 trances. As these sweep swarms are made dur- 

 ing a flow of honey, there probably would not 

 be any very great trouble from robbers; but 

 the loss of considerable young brood would 

 amount to something. However, if you thereby 

 keep down swarming, and at the same time 

 control increase, perhaps the sacrifice of a little 

 unsealed brood would be a small matter. — Ed. J 



