214 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 



one of honey, taken from the weaker, and so on till 

 all have their five frames absolutely tilled with 

 brood. 



If you have been as successful as you should be, 

 this point in the operation will arrive from two 

 weeks to ten days before the honey harvest, you 

 aiming to have it be thus from the start, just in ac- 

 cordance with the location you occupy. When all 

 are thus full of brood, go to hive No. 1 and look the 

 frames over till you find the queen, when you will 

 set the comb she is on outside of the hive, and car- 

 ry the other four combs of brood, bees and all. to 

 hive No. 2. You will now open this hive and spread 

 apart the frames so as to set the combs you brought 

 from No. 1 in each alternate space; for by so doing 

 there will be no quarreling of bees; at least, I have 

 never known them to fight, during a period of 16 

 years' practice. 



When j'ou have the combs thus arranged, the sur- 

 plus arrangement is to be put on, and the hive 

 closed. You will now go back to No. 1, put the 

 frame having the queen on it back in the hive, and 

 give them a frame having a strip of foundation ^ 

 inch wide fastened to the center of the top bar for 

 a comb guide, when you will adjust the division- 

 board to suit the size of this little colony, and close 

 the hive. If there is any honey coming in from the 

 fields, which there generally is at this time, al- 

 though the main flow has not commenced, you will 

 find the nicest worker comb you ever saw in this 

 last frame at the end of a week, and it will cost you 

 less than you could get the same comb built from 

 foundation. When this frame is filled with comb, 

 take it out and put in another empty frame, and so 

 on all summer; for the one comb the queen has 

 will give bees enough to keep them in excellent or- 

 der so that they will build worker comb all the 

 time. In this way I secure all the combs I need In 

 the apiary, and in the fall unite several of these lit- 

 tle colonies together, or give them to some of the 

 weakest of the other colonies I may chance to have. 

 The colony in No. 2 soon has a hive full to over- 

 flowing with bees, of just the right age to work in 

 the harvest to the best advantage, and will roll up a 

 pile of honey, I assure you. When they swarm 

 they are to be treated the same a"* you always have 

 treated the swarms, so that, should all swarm, you 

 will have only the same number that you did in the 

 spring, thus preventing increase. 



The ne.xt plan which I use is that of caging the 

 queen upon the issue of the first swarm, and plac- 

 ing her on top of the brood-frames or any other 

 convenient place, and allowing the swarm to re- 

 turn. Six days thereafter the hive is opened, all 

 the queen-cells cut off, and the queen left where 

 she was, for eight days more. At the end of this 

 time the queen-cells are again taken out and the 

 queen liberated, after which they seem to have no 

 more desire to swarm that season. In cutting out 

 the queen-cells I shake the bees off the combs each 

 time, and in this way no cells need ever be missed. 

 If this precaution is not taken, cells will often be 

 missed, which will cause much trouble. While the 

 queen is caged, the bees will store honey to a cer- 

 tain extent in the brood-combs, in cells from which 

 the young bees hatch; but when the queen is liber- 

 ated this honey will be carried to the boxes, and I 

 do not know that I have ever seen work progress 

 faster in the sections that I have for the next week 

 after the queen was returned to the bees. 



The last one of the plans is the one recommended 



by Prof. Cook; namely, when the first swarm of the 

 season issues, it is hived in a separate hive, when 

 the next one Is hived with the old colony from 

 which the first one issued; the next is hived where 

 the second came from, and so on to the end of the 

 season, thus giving us only one increase. This plan 

 works well with a short and rather poor season ; but 

 when the season is long continued, many of the 

 colonies first treated swarm again with me, thus 

 making too much work. On the whole I much pre- 

 fer the first plan. G. M. Dooi.ittle. 

 Borodino, N. Y. 



SHALL WE USE QUILTS OR ENAMEL- 

 ED CLOTHS? 



DR. MILLEIv HANDLES THE SUBJECT IN ALL ITS 

 BEARINGS. 



I HAVE been quite interested in studying the an- 

 swers to Question 152. The answers are about two 

 to one against the use of enamel cloth, in the pro- 

 duction of comb honey, under a flat cover, in a 

 five-sixteenths space. On the other hand, about 

 two to one are in favor of using the cloth in the 

 same place for queen-rearing. Some are quite pos- 

 itive that the cloth should be used in both cases, 

 and some just as positive that it should be used in 

 neither, while some think it should be used for 

 queen-rearing but not for comb honey. 



I am not surprised at these different opinions, 

 for at one time or another I think I have agreed 

 with all, and I suspect that, with exactly the same 

 thing in mind, the different respondents would 

 have very little diflerence of opinion. 



When I first commenced using movable combs, 

 aflat board with holes in it, called a honey-board, 

 was placed over the top-bars, with a "i space be- 

 tween and an outside cover above. A pretty solid 

 mass of brace-combs and honey filled the space be- 

 tween the top-bars and the honey-board, so that, 

 every time the hive was opened, the honey-board 

 had to be pried up, the jar thereof greatly irritating 

 the bees and making a dauby mess. On closing the 

 hive again it was difficult to keep from mashing 

 bees between the brace-combs as well as at the 

 edges. Those who never used exactly the same 

 thing can hardly imagine what a boon was the 

 sheet, or quilt, Invented by Robert Bickford, and I 

 can readily excuse those who had been through my 

 previous experience for being hard to convince that 

 quilts could be dispensed with under any circum- 

 stances. Please understand, that the quilt took the 

 place of the solid honey-board, the same outside 

 cover being used over either. The principal diffi- 

 culty was the lack of durability, no substance be- 

 ing found to answer well the purpose, through 

 which the bees would not gnaw holes in a provok- 

 ingly short space of time. In spite of this objection 

 I think I should have continued to this day to use 

 quilts had I continued to use the same kind of cov- 

 ers. Those who object to quilts because harder to 

 remove than flat boards, can, it seems to me, hardly 

 speak from actual experience; or if they do, there 

 must have been something wrong about their ex- 

 perience. After I began to use Heddon and T 

 supers, I noticed, in tiering up, that the upper su- 

 per was not so free from propolis as those under it. 

 After a time it occurred to me that the quilt was 

 the cause of the trouble, for the bees were sure to 

 put propolis upon the tops of the sections under 

 the quilt, sometimes more than an eighth of an inch 



