January, 1910. 



American Hee Joarnal 



with the candy method last summer. My bees 

 are hybrids. 



G. What do you think of feeding sugar m 

 the spring? 



7. Do you think some strains of bees will 

 gather much more honey than others, under 

 the same condition? What strains do you rec- 

 ommend? Tennessee. 



Answers. — 1. Wait till they swarm; hive 

 the swarm, setting the old colony and swarm 

 close together, and 21 days later cut up llie 

 old hive, melt the combs, and add the bees to 

 the swarm. If, however, you want increase, 

 you can transfer at the end of the 21 days. 



2. It will work all right. Here is some- 

 thing you may like better: Drum out all the 

 bees, putting them in the new hive on the old 

 stand with a frame of brood, put on an ex- 

 cluder, and then the old hive. In 21 days 

 the worker-brood will be gone from the old 

 hive above. 



3. Vou can «et combs built out only by 

 having them filled, as bees do not build comb 

 beyond their needs. Instead of shallow frames, 

 you can put a story of deeper frames above, 

 and then extract them. Or, you may brush 

 bees and queen from the combs into the hive, 

 leaving one brood in the hive and filling up 

 with foundation, then put the frames of brood 

 in an upper story, and excluder between. 

 Then, when the brood has matured above, you 

 may take these upper combs, extracting from 

 them if necessary. 



4. When the harvest begins, take from your 

 best colony two frames of brood with queen 

 and adhering bees, and put them in a hive 

 on a new stand. Ten days later let the hives 

 exchange places. Then divide the qucenless 

 part into nuclei of 2 frames each, making sure 

 that each nucleus has a good cell centrally lo- 

 cated, and imprisoning each nucleus for 2 or 

 3 days. The one on the stand where the 

 queen had been needs no imprisonment. 



Another way: Get a fresh comb built in 

 the colony containing your best queen. About 

 ten days after this comb is started, take it away 

 and put it in the center of a strong colony 

 from which you have removed the queen. 

 Nearly all the cells the bees start will be on 

 this comb, because it is freshly built. These 

 cells may then be distributed to nuclei at 

 pleasure. 



You will find some valuable information 

 about this simple way in "Forty Years Among 

 the Bees." 



5. Yes. I can give you a way that is en- 

 tirely safe. You must have some frames of 

 brood just hatching, with no unsealed brood. 

 One way to secure these is to put the frame* 

 of brood over an excluder on a itrong col- 

 ony 8 or 9 days before you want to use them. 

 Brush all the bees off these combs, leaving 

 not a single bee. Put them in a hive that you 

 will set over a strong colony, with a sheet 

 of wirecloth between the two stories, and close 

 up bee-ti^ht. of course after putting in the 

 queen. In five days you may allow a very 

 small entrance somewhere into this upper story, 

 but of course not connecting with the lower 

 story. As soon as you think enough bees have 

 hatched out to keep the bees from chilling, 

 remove to a new stand. Possibly there may 

 be enough bees at the end of the 5 days, in 

 which case it will be better to remove to the 

 new stand before allowing any bees to fly. 



6. Not so good in spring as in fall, but 

 will do if you have no honey. But some 

 pollen must be present, for bees cannot rear 

 brood from sugar alone. 



7. Yes, there is a difference. Italian 3- 

 banders are probably as safe as any. 



"DOT HAPPY BEE-MAN." 



(Drawing sent specially for the American Bee Journal by Leon C. Wheeler, 

 of Barryton. Mich.) 



Oil-Heater in Bee-Cellar — Medium 



Brood in Shallow Extracting 



Frames — Feeding Combs 



of Honey. 



1. Will an oil-heatcr burning in the cellar 

 for a few minutes affect in any way the beci 

 that are stored in it? 



2. Will medium-brood comb foundation be 

 all right for shallow extracting framei? and 

 will it do to put full sheets of foundation 

 between drawn combs in supers? 



3. In giving combs of honey in early spring 

 to a colony, do you put them in the center 

 of the brood-nest? Do you scratch or break 

 the cappings? 



It is wonderful what a fund of informa- 

 tion we have in the American Bee Journal. 

 It saves us a lot of mistakes and blundcis. 



Iowa. 



Answers. — 1. Yes, it will warm them up 

 and it will injure the quality of the air. Hot 

 •tones or ju^s of hot water tightly corked 

 will leave tlie air better. 



^ 



Dr. Miller— How lucky! There's a railroad car famine, and if I had any honey to ship 

 I'd likely have trouble to get a car. Fortunately. I've no honey to sell, so I won't have to 

 bother. How happy 1 am! 



I ish von of dose happy bee-mans. 

 I don't got to vork any more; 



1 loafs all day on der shtove round about, 

 Und hops mit mine feet on der Hoor. 



2. The medium brood will be all right. It 

 will give better combs to keep the foundation 

 by itself, as there is likely to be some irregu- 

 lar work if combs and foundation are mixed 



3. Put them next to the combs containmj; 

 brood, but not between them. It is not a 

 bad plan to break the cappings. 



Bee-Moth in Winter. 



I have a good colony of Italian bees that 

 did well the past summer. When removing 

 the quilt on top in preparing them for winter 

 I found a bee-moth between the quilt and 

 frame. 



1. Will the bee-moth work this winter? 



2. Will the bee-moth (or grub worm) when 

 matured, die, or will it build a cocoon and 

 then hatch? If so, into what? 



3. How and when is the best time to get 

 rid of it? Maine. 



Answers. — 1. The moth is likely to die be- 

 fore spring without laying any eggs; but there 

 are very commonly eggs or young larvse that 

 will live over in the hive. 



2. The grub, or larva, when it comes to 

 full size, spins a cocoon and comes out a 

 moth, and in course of time the moth dies. 



3. The best thing is to keep colonies strong 

 so the bees will keep the moth at bay, al- 

 though Italians will defend themselves even if 

 tolerably weak. 



Moving Bees to More Pasturage. 



The honey source here is white clover and 

 basswood. Ten miles west from here is 40 

 to 60 acres of wild raspberry bushes, fairly 

 well covered. People came 10 to 14 miles to 

 pick berries from this patch last summer. It 

 was just covered with berries. In a town 14 

 . miles east of here they started a cucumber 

 pickle factory last summer. The farmers 

 around there raise from Ya to V/i or 2 acres 

 each of cucumbers. 



1. Would it pay to move my bees 10 miles 

 west to a 40 or CO acre patch of raspberry 

 bushes next summer, back here for the bass- 

 wood flow, and 14 miles cast to the cucumber 



fields after the basswood flow, as there is 

 "nothing doing" here after the basswood flow? 



2. How many colonies could I move to this 

 raspberry field to best advantage ? I have 

 heard that raspberry bloom almost always will 

 yield nectar. 



3. How is cucumber as a nectar-yielding 

 plant? and how many colonies could be kept 

 at one place to the best advantage, when the 

 farmers raise J4 to 2 acres each? 



Minnesota. 

 Answers. — 1. I can only guess, and my 

 guess is that it would pay to do so if nothing 

 is yielding at home at the time of raspberry 

 and cucumber flow. 



2. If no other bees are there, 100 colonies 

 or more might do well. 



3. Hard to tell. Depends somewhat upon 

 size of farms. If each farmer plants half an 

 acre, you will readily see that there will be 

 four times as much pasturage if the farms 

 average 40 acres as if they average 160 acres. 

 I should guess that 100 colonies might do well 

 with 1 acre in every 100 in cucumbers. 



Spacing Hoffman Frames — Queen 



Returning from Mating — Space 



Above Brood-Frames. 



1. Are shallow extracting frames (Hoff- 

 man) spaced right for brood-frames ? 



2. Will new swarms, put on these shallow 

 frames with full sheets of thin super founda- 

 tion, wired and waxed to top-bar, hold in 

 place and not melt down? 



3. Will a virgin queen taken in a trap 

 when she comes out to mate, if the queen 

 and trap are carried off a few rods, opened, 

 and the queen takes her flight, be sure to 

 come back in safety? 



4. How much space do you want between 

 super and brood-franics? 



5. Do your bees build comb and fill in 

 badly between the top of the brood-frames 

 and the bottom of the sections first put on? 



C. Is there any practical way to prevent 

 this nuisance, and have them do good work? 

 Massachusetts. 

 Answer. — 1. I think they are generally made 



