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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



July 1. 



(while we have no honey) or whether it is per- 

 manently ours. You will have to keep wide 

 awake, my friends, for that doctor is a sharper 

 — sharper than you are. He may take back 

 Chicago from you at any time. 



"sassing" editors. 

 Yes, and that Dr. Miller has commenced to 

 " sass " the editor of the American Bee Journal, 

 page 332— and that, too, in his own paper. He 

 even attempts to criticise the editor's language! 

 If an editor can't say just what he pleases, in 

 his own paper, I should like to know what 

 rights he has left. Bro. York, stop his paper 

 and settle him. 



NEW CONVERTS. 



"Old Subscriber," on page 329, A. B. J., says, 

 "Nary new subscriber will I send for a bee- 

 paper." Now, as Old Subscriber thinks he is 

 sailing under my flag I must tell him he is 

 much mistaken. It is not the bee-papers that 

 make the new converts; it is the everlasting 

 mania of bee-keepers themselves for teaching 

 their neighbors that works their own ruin. For 

 every new convert made by the bee-papers, the 

 bee-keepers themselves make a thousand. If a 

 man picks up a bee- paper and happens to strike 

 one of the Skylark articles he reads it with a 

 hungry heart, and weeps when it is done — that 

 there is no more; but if he runs against "T 

 tins," " Hoffman Frames," or " Large vs. Small 

 Hives," he throws down the book in disgust. 

 It is too dry for him. No. no, Old .Subscriber, it 

 is not the bee-papers that are to blame; it is 

 you and I, and all of us, that do the converting. 

 Then the fellow wants a bee-paper. Let him 

 have it. A bee-keeper up to the times is much 

 better than a donkey that will ruin the market. 



THE ELWOOD DEQUEENING METHOD 



FOR THE PREVENTION OF SWARMING; SOME OF 

 THE DIFFICULTIES, AND HOW OVERCOME. 



By T. H. Kloer. 



During the spring of 1888 Mr. P. H. Elwood 

 presented, for the first time, to the readers of 

 Gleanings, the method practiced by himself 

 and Mr. Hetherington, of producing comb 

 honey with colonies of bees which were made 

 queenless, and left in that state for some time. 

 As I had rented a farm for that summer, I 

 hailed with a great deal of satisfaction a plan 

 which promised to do away with the annoyance 

 of voluntary swarming. I studied Elwood's 

 article thoroughly. I had about 100 colonies of 

 bees, and moved them all to the farm. I felt 

 somewhat reluctant about trying the new 

 method; but when swarming began, and the 

 same old trouble of several swarms issuing at 



the same time, with the incident clustering 

 together in the same place, had worked me up 

 to the requisite pitch of excitement, I determin- 

 ed to make short shrift of the whole business, 

 and dequeen every colony that had not yet 

 swarmed. This I did forthwith. 



Your older readers are, I think, mostly con- 

 versant with the Elwood method. For the 

 benefit of the more recent beginners I will detail 

 the procedure. 



About the time when the colonies become so 

 crowded with bees and honey that there is 

 danger of their getting the swarming- fever, 

 and, preferably, before that troublesome dis- 

 order has actually begun to make them dissat- 

 isfied, the apiarist hunts up the queen in each 

 hive; he takes one or two combs, with some 

 hatching brood, and adhering bees enough to 

 make a small nucleus, and hangs them in a 

 nucleus hive, which stands near the colony, 

 and the queen is placed on these combs, to be 

 kept in the nucleus until she is needed again. 

 Nine days after this operation, the dequeened 

 hive is carefully gone over and every queen- 

 cell removed from the combs. The colony is 

 now hopelessly queenless — that is. there re- 

 mains, at this time, only sealed brood in the 

 hive, from which it is impossible for the bees to 

 raise a queen. In this hopeless state the bees 

 are left for a week or ten days, when the old 

 queen is reintroduced into the hive. 



During the 9 days succeeding the removal of 

 the queen, and while the construction of queen- 

 cells goes on, there is no noticeable slacking-up 

 in the work of the bees. They seem to work 

 on, so far as I can see, about as contentedly as 

 if they had their queen among them. But 

 after the destruction of the queen-cells there 

 is a noticeable let-up in the energies of the 

 bees. After the queen has been reintroduced 

 into the hive, and she has been accepted, and 

 has commenced to lay, the bees begin to work 

 with much more energy and vim. There being 

 plenty of empty cells in the combs, the queen 

 can exercise her laying powers to the fullest 

 extent, and all desire to swarm is for the time 

 being expunged. If some honey has accumu- 

 lated in the cells, from which young bees have 

 emerged, it will be removed by the workers 

 into the sections, to give room to the queen. 

 As the full strength of the colony, excepting 

 the bees taken for the nucleus, has been held 

 together, and even constantly augmented by 

 the hatching brood, the colony is in good con- 

 dition to store honey. The season of compar- 

 ative sluggishness during the hopeless period 

 is, under natural swarming, often equaled by 

 the sulkiness of the bees, which sometimes 

 seem to be unable to make up their mind as to 

 whether they want to swarm or not. during 

 which time of indisposition they do no work. 



This is an exposition of the method which 

 bear's Mr. Elwood's name, as nearly as I can 



