44 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



February 



about thirty miles south of Nash- 

 ville. The Spring Hill postofflce and 

 village is located about a mile from 

 the railroad. Strangely enough the 

 railroad has given the station the 

 name "Bwells" instead of calling it 

 by the same name as the post office. 

 This leads to some confusion. The 

 Davis homestead is located between 

 the town and the station so that 

 while living in the country they have 

 all the conveniences of the town right 

 at the door. The father, J. M. Davis 

 rears three banded Italians exclu- 

 sively, while the son. Ben G. Davis con- 

 fines his entire attention to the gold- 

 ens. Ben is unmarried and makes 

 his home with his parents, but his 

 apiary is several miles distant to 

 ?void mixing of the strains of bees. 

 Our first illustration shows a corner 

 of the J. M. Davis yard. At the time 

 of my visit there were about fifteen 

 hundred nuclei in the two yards. The 

 systems followed by father and son 

 differ in several things. J. M. Davis 

 uses four compartment nuclei for, 

 mating purposes as shown in the 

 second illustration, while Ben uses 

 only two divisions for a full colony 

 as shown at Fig. 3. The four com- 

 partment hives have an opening at 

 each side and one at each end to 

 avoid mixing of the bees or danger 

 of the queens entering the wrong com- 

 partment on returning from their 

 mating flight. These compartments 

 are lettered. A, B, C, and D and when 

 manipulating them, it is the habit 

 to begin always at A and follow 

 through the regular system to avoid 

 mistakes. Figure 4, shows a part of 

 the Ben Davis yard. Double the 

 number of hives are necessary to 

 mate the same number of queens by 

 his system that his father requires, 



w 



FIG 3.-BEN. G. DAVIS AND HIS MATING NUCLEI 



Fig. 2.— The Four Compartment Mating 

 HiivES Used by J. M. Davis 



since each hive has only two com- 

 partments instead of four. Just in 

 front of this yard is a small stream 

 which furnishes an abundance of 

 water at all times. This is an Im- 

 partant matter when so many bees 

 are kept in one place. On page 341 

 of our October number was shown 

 the watering device in use at the 

 home yard. 



GOLDENS OR THREE BANDED ? 



Until recently I have been pre- 

 judiced against golden bees. Now I 

 am not sure about it. It depends 

 more upon the strain of bees than 

 upon the color. The few golden 

 queens that I have had in my yards 

 have not been particularly good, 

 while some of the three banded 

 queens have made a remarkable 

 showing. Goldens are often said to 

 be bad robbers and thus more likely 

 to bring home foulbrood, bad temp- 

 ered and not particularly hardy. As 

 far as I could see there was no dif- 

 ference in the bees in the two yards 

 in any respect aside from color. The 

 goldens are more beautiful and are 

 very popular on that account. At 

 the time of my visit there was little 

 honey coming in from the field, yet 

 there was no tendency to rob in 

 either apiary. 



We went into the yard and examined 



a number of colonies without using 

 smoke, yet the bees' showed no in- 

 clinations to resent our presence. 

 Ben remarked that he never used a 

 queen as a breeder where it was 

 necessary to use smoke in handling 

 the colony and the goldens in this 

 yard seemed fully as gentle as any 

 three-banded Italians that I have 

 seen. As far as honey gathering is 

 concerned, I learned from J. M. Bu- 

 chanan that his best colony had 

 gathered 250 pounds of surplus while 

 the next best produced a hundred 

 pounds less. The big production was 

 from a colony headed by a golden. 

 While I am not quite ready to aband- 

 on the three-banded Italians for 

 goldens I have lost most of my pre- 

 judice against them and from now on 

 will look more to the strain of bees 

 than to whether they be goldens or 

 three-banded bees. 



GETTING BIG BATCHES OF CELLS. 



It takes a lot of bees to rear queens 

 by the Davis methods. In the first 

 place from two to four times as many 

 bees are necessary to fill their 

 nuclei as would be needed to fill the 

 same number of baby nuclei. At the 

 close of the season all that is nec- 

 essary is to remove all the queens 

 but one from each hive, remove the 

 division boards and winter them as 



