1917 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



317 



1m liatullcd in July and August as well as car- 

 li' T or later. 



'^. You may do very well with thi; book you 

 liivf, yet if you do a great deal with bees 

 \<'u will hardly be satisfied with one book. In 

 \'>ur bee journal you find a number of books 

 ..iH-ut bees that are all good. 



3. Without knowing particulars it is hard to 

 say why a colony oes not work in supers 

 ulun others do, but the likelihood is that it is 

 1" ' ,iuse the colony is not strong enough. 



edge of the foundation before the wedge is 

 driven in. If there is no wedge and groove, 

 run along the joint melted wax and rosin. 



Distance Swarms Go — Fastening 

 Foundation Combs. 



1. Why did some of my hives swarm before 

 they got the super started? 



2. How far do the bees go when they swarm 

 for a new abode? 



3. When the bees swarm and they alight on 

 a bush, how far is the tree or their home from 

 the place where they had clustered on the 

 bush? 



4. Where could I get some oil of sweet 

 clover? It is used to hunt bees. 



5. Will you give me a good method to fasten 

 combs in frames? 



PENNSYLVANIA. 

 Answers — 1. Hard to say without particu- 

 lars, but likely because there was nothing to 

 bait them into the supers. 



2. They may go three miles or more. 



3. There is no rule about it, but they are not 

 likely to cluster more than 10 or 15 rods from 

 the hive they issued from. 



4: I don't know. I never before heard of 

 oil of sweet clover. 



5. The foundation should be supported by 

 wires or foundation-splints, and securely fas- 

 tened to the top-bar. This may be done by 

 means of the wedge that is sent with top-bars 

 that have two saw-kerfs on the under side, the 

 wedge being crowded clear in, and if the foun- 

 dation is not thoroughly fastened without it 

 an extra strip of foundation or else a thin strip 

 -of wood should be put in the kerf with the 



Putting on Supers 



When should I put supers on my bees? I 

 hived two swarms today. When should I put 

 supers on these two hives they swarmed from? 



ILLINOLS. 



Answer — You are in a white clover region, 

 and should give supers as soon as you sec the 

 first white clover in bloom. When a colony 

 swarms the supers should be shifted from the 

 old colony to the swarm as soon as the queen 

 has begvm to work in the new hive, say in two 

 or three days. 



Home Queen Rearing Failures 



1. I have been trying to raise some queens 

 for the first time, both over ([ueen-excluder 

 and below, with poor success. I did not take 

 brood away. Is that the cause of not getting 

 cells accepted? 



2. Have had several cells hatch out in nu- 

 clei and after the queen had laid a few eggs 

 she disappeared and the bees would rear an- 

 other from the eggs laid. Can you give cause? 



3. Some queens batched without wings, or 

 the bees cut them off. 



4. How long must cells be capped before 

 caging them? I caged one lot and not a single 

 one hatched. 



5. Will eggs from an unfertile queen pro- 

 duce a queen? 



6. Where foulbrood exists and shows up in 

 only part of the brood-frames would it do any 

 good to destroy only the affected frames? 



7. On one section I had queen-cells over 

 excluder and as one would hatch the bees 

 would ball her. What was the cause? 



ILLINOIS. 



Answers — 1. Hard to say without knowing 

 all particulars. But if bees have unsealed 

 brood at command they do not feel hopelessly 

 queenless, and so not so much in need of 

 (|ueen-cells. But there may have been other 

 reasons for your failure. 



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i. There iii.iy li,-ivc been too little room (or 

 the queen. 



3. Queens may he horn with defective wings 

 or legs, pcrhap» clue to laclt of sufficient heat 

 or proper nourishment. Sometimes bees hall a 

 young queen and gnaw her wings. 



4. The shorter the time of caging before 

 hatching the better. (Generally one can man- 

 age to have virgins emerge within a day or two 

 after caging, and yet I have known quccnB ap- 

 parently good that wcr« caged 4 or 5 days be- 

 fore hatching. In any case it is important that 

 the caged cell be in the thidst of a strong mass 

 of bees, with no possible danger of being 

 chilled. 



i>. No. 



6. It might. 



I. I don't know. I'ossibly the bees conclud- 

 ed, after all, that they didn't need another 

 queen, even though to some extent isolated 

 from the laying queen. Possibly your opening 

 the hive and disturbing the bees may have 

 caused the balling. 



Prime Swarm on Old Stand 



1. We have on hand quite a few supers con- 

 taining empty sections filled with foundation. 

 They were left over from 1915. We stored 

 them in an out-building last winter, but snow 

 drifted in and filled supers with dirt, fine par- 

 ticles still sticking to the foundation. They 

 look quite black with dirt. Should we use 

 them' Will the bees clean them? 



2. We formerly practiced in a case of 

 swarming, putting the young swarm on the old 

 stand, and after seven days removing the old 

 one to a new location. This season we left 

 the two together. Now, in one case we find 

 most all the bees are back in the old stand and 

 the hive the young swarm occupies has but few 

 bees, while the other is something remarkable; 

 never saw anything like it. They now have 

 four supers on, nearly all filled. Meantime 

 the hive we put on the old stand containing the 

 prime swarm has one super and has hardly 

 done anything. Both hives are as close to- 

 gether as can be, facing due east. 



3 What do you consider an extra heavy 

 J"='<i? IOWA. 



Answers— 1. If it be only ordinary dust 

 that lias blown into the sections, I think the 

 bees will clean them all right. 



2. The two hives being so close together it 

 IS not so very strange that in some cases the 

 bees should prefer the old hive; but if you 

 had moved the old hive away in a week all the 

 field bees would have been with the swarm. 

 The strange thing in the case is that the bees 

 did not swarm out with the first virgin that 

 left her cell. 



3. That would vary greatly with the locality, 

 season and management. In some cases it 

 might be 50 pounds, in others 500. 



Swarms Uniting, Etc. 



1 I had a swarm issue and as I did not care 

 to have them swarm again I hived them on the 

 present stand with the old swarm by its side. 

 In one week I moved the old swarm to a new 

 stand. The same day that I moved them a 

 prime swarm issued from another hive, and in 

 a few minutes an afterswarm issued from the 

 hive I had just moved. I put them together 

 in one hive. In about five hours they left the 

 hive and clustered on the front of the hive 

 that had sent out the afterswarm. I gave a 

 super with sections and foundation. A part 

 of them went in, but as there did not seem to 

 be room for all, I gave another super. So far 

 they seem to be all right. What caused them 

 to act so? Did I do wrong by putting the two 

 together? 



2. Is it all right to put brood foundation in 

 sections? 1 run out of super-foundation and 

 used a little brood for starter. MAINE. 



Answers — 1. A week after the prime swarm 

 issued you moved the old hive to a new stand. 

 Usually you would have expected no after- 

 swarm, and the reason that one did issue was 

 probably because the prime swarm had been 

 delayed by bad weather sp that it toolv only a 



