February, 1910. 



American ISae Journal 



starving at 'first, but when I looked in at them, 

 I found them with plenty of honey. Then 1 

 feared it was foul brood. They have large 

 brood-nesls, and the brood looks nice and cvt-n, 

 no sunken brood or bad odor in the hive. 1 

 found some drone-brood in the cells, and when 

 I lifted it out with a tooth-pick, it was just 

 the skeleton of a drone, and at the edge of 

 the comb I found some worker-brood that was 

 not capped. It looked like brood ready to 

 come out of the cell, but when lifted with the 

 tooth-pick, it was dead and looked dark. That 

 colony was strong with bees, but the brood- 

 ncst was scattered. The bees have been very 

 ill to handle this year. After the bees begin 

 to fly on cool mornings, they would clean up 

 all dead bees. Now, what shall I do ? Your 

 answers to others in the American Bee 

 Journal have been a great help to me in the 

 past. Indiana. 



Answer. — I am extremely sorry to say that 

 your letter dated Aug. 25 was in some 

 mysterious way mislaid, not turning up again 

 until the beginning of the New \ear to re- 

 proach me with its presence, and to remind me 

 that among New Year's resolutions there 

 should be one reading, "Resolved, That I'll 

 not again mislay a letter to be answered in 

 this department, nor let any one else do so." 



I am very much puzzled to know what to 

 think about your trouble. Some things in 

 the case look like disease, but a good many 

 don't. There seems to be some trouble with 

 the brood, but you say the entrance of the 

 hive would be full of dead bees, and some 

 of them would be young bees. That seems as 

 if the dead bees were mostly mature bees, 

 making the trouble with the bees rather than 

 the brood. On the whole, I am more in- 

 clined to suspect poisoning, although it was 

 not at a time of year when spraying poisons, 

 would be going on. Of course, there might 

 be poisoning in some other way. It could 

 not very well be the honey-dew. That kills 

 bees in winter, not in August. 



It is possible that before this time you 

 may have informed yourself in the case so 

 as to need no suggestions from me. If there 

 was poisoning, the trouble probably disap- 

 peared in a short time. If there was dis- 

 ease, that also may have disappeared with 

 the cessation of brood-rearing, only to re- 

 appear with the beginning of brood-rearing 

 next spring. In that case the thing to do is 

 to keep watch, and when the first sign of 

 anything wrong with the brood appears, send 

 a sample of it, (a piece of comb 2 or 3 

 inches square) to Dr. E. F. Phillips, De- 

 partment of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 

 If you write for it, he will send you a box 

 in which to send the sample. There will 

 be no charge, and you will have the best 

 expert advice possible to obtain. 



Preventing Swarming — Amount for 



Winter Stores — Sour Honey — 



Foul Brood, Etc. 



I have a small farm of 62 acres, and have 

 always kept a few colonies of bees, or for 

 at least 20 years. I remember very well 

 my first bee-keeping, putting boxes in the 

 trees and in that way capturing my swarms. 

 My bee-yard at present consists of 18 Ital- 

 ian colonies, 10 spring count. I intend to 

 winter the bees on the summer stands, in 

 single-wall 8-frame dovetailed hives. I am 

 at the third 100-pound sack of sugar, feed- 

 ing the bees. Last fall I had 26 colonies, 

 but reduced them to 18, thinking the stronger 

 the colony the less feed it would take to 

 winter them. I can not remember such a 

 poor honey-crop as the past season, and with 

 so many flowers in bloom. A good many 

 bees in this country will certainly starve. 



1. How long can a bee live? 



2. Will bees rear brood sooner in spring 

 when wintered in the cellar on the summer 

 stands? 



3. How can I prevent bees swarming? I 

 am running for section honey. 



4. In what way will bees do better in the 

 cellar? 



5. About how many pounds of honey lesi 

 can be fed to bees when wintered in the 

 cellar than on the summer stands? 



6. How high should the summer stands be 

 from the ground for the hives to rest on ? 

 And how will it be best to build them? 



7. What is the cause of sour honey that 

 was taken out of supers about the middle of 

 June? 



8. What is the first sign of foul brood? 



9. Do you think a Danzenbaker hive is a 

 preventive of swarming more than any other 

 hive? Missouri. 



Answers. — 1. A worker-bee, in the busy sea- 

 son» lives about an average of 6 weeks. Some 



think less. It depends much on the work 

 done. A worker born in the fall, doing no 

 work that fall, may live 7 or 8 months. A 

 (luecn lives 2, 3 or more years, in rare cases 

 5 or (1. A drone lives till he dies from star- 

 vation, the workers declining to feed him 

 when they feel they can no longer alford it. 



2. They begin rearing brood as a rule 

 sooner outdoors than in cellar. Kven in the 

 north brood-rearing outdoors begins often, if 

 not generally, in February, and in the cellar 

 generally not till March. 



3. 1 don't know. I wish I did. Some 

 pages of "Forty Years Among the Hees" are 

 taken up with telling what I do in my strug- 

 gle against swarming, but just the best way 

 is still an unsolved problem. If you like 

 the plan, however, you may avoid swarm- 

 ing by making a colony queenless 10 days 

 before the harvest and then giving it a young 

 laying queen. You can get the secret of Dr. 

 Jones' plan of preventing swarming by send- 

 ing 25 cents for his book. (See advertising 

 columns.) 



4. Almost any old way so there is abundant 

 ventilation of both the hive and the cellar, 

 with the temperature at about 45 degrees. 



5. It depends upon localities and conditions. 

 Perhaps generally about 10 pounds. 



6. Where it is not necessary to take special 

 precautions against ants, il is well to have 

 hives near the ground, say 4 to 6 inches. Just 

 now there is a decided tendency toward con- 

 crete stands, and it may be well to have the 

 hive rest on only a small portion of the stand, 

 as when it rests on a flat surface there is a 

 tendency toward water remaining between the 

 stand and bottomboard and rotting the latter. 



7. I don't know. Likely some peculiarity 

 as to the source of the honey. 



8. Dead brood. If at any time you find 

 dead brood and don't understand it, send a 

 sample at once to Dr. E. F. Phillips, Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 



9. No, I don't think that is claimed. 



Bees, Management, Wintering, and 

 Locality. 



I have so far received 3 copies of the 

 American Bee Journal, and have during that 

 time read some very interesting things in it. 

 I am not in the bee-keeping business myself, 

 but am very much interested in it, and would 

 like to be, but there are certain things I 

 can not understand about it as yet. In the 

 first place, many people claim to have secured 

 from one to 6 supers of honey from one col- 

 onv in one season; others one to 2 supers of 

 honey, and from 50 to 100 pounds of ex- 

 tracted honey from one colony in a season, 

 and still others have secured a tremendous 

 amount. 



This town is located about 50 miles west 

 of New York City, in the Ramapo Valley, 

 and I should judge from the writings of 

 others that this is a very good locality for 

 bees, as there is plenty of dandelion, clover, 

 sumac, goldenrod, asters, and some basswood, 

 and several other honey-yielding plants, al- 

 though the bees rarely made a living here last 

 year. One colony did fill one super, but 

 had a scant store for winter. There were 

 about 50 colonies of bees here last summer, 

 and years before that there were not so many 

 owned by different men, say 5 or 6, each 

 man owning only a few colonies, perhaps the 

 owners were a mile apart. Now there is one 

 man who received the best results from his 

 bees. He started about 5 years ago with 

 one colony that he got from a tree in the 

 woods, and every year since he puts up 

 hives in different places in the woods and 

 catches swarms, sometimes catching a nice- 

 looking yellow swarm, and more times catch- 

 ing black swarms, so naturally the bees are 

 mixed, but the Italians seem to be a little 

 the best, but not always, for sometimes he 

 catches a real black swarm that stores equally 

 as much as any other be has. 



Commencing in the spring, his supers are 

 ready with foundation, natural swarming is 

 allowed, most colonies swarming twice, and 

 some only once. He hives the swarms, giv- 

 ing them 8 Hoffman frames with foundation. 

 After swarming is over he puts on one super 

 apiece, and as soon as a colony fills its super 

 he takes this off and replaces it with a new 

 one, if the season isn't too late, and the bees 

 will perhaps fill this with comb, and fill 2 or 

 3 sections with honey, but he never thinks 

 of getting over one full 24-section super from 

 one colony in one season ; and some colonies 

 will partly fill one super, and some will not 

 go up into the super at all. and store only 

 just enough for winter; and still some will 

 not store enough for wintering. He never 

 requeens any colonies, or catches any drones, 



and, for wintering, the colonies are left out- 

 side on the east side of the hill. The hives 

 arc % or one-inch wood, with just an extra 

 cover on, and no extra packing on the out- 

 side. Has he right kind of bees? Does he 

 not manage his bees properly? Is the win- 

 tering too much for them? Is the locality 

 too poor? What do you think about it? 



New York. 



Answer. — Bunching your questions, I should 

 say that the bees your neighbor has are 

 probably not so very much to blame for his 

 results, and from what you say about the 

 flora, the pasturage is good. As to his man- 

 agement, he might do worse — if he tried hard 

 enough. At any rate, if he had the best re- 

 sults, it must have been that his neighbors 

 did worse. They must be experts at doing 

 things the wrong way. 



The man you speak of catches swarms in 

 the woods every year. That's all right on 

 his part, but some one must be doing pretty 

 bad work to let so many swarms get away. 

 Now let me recount some of the things that 

 he does that are not good, and then tell how 

 you will do when you get to be a good bee- 

 keeper: 



He puts supers on after swarming is over. 

 You will put them on before there is any 

 swarming, about as soon as you see the very 

 first white-clover blossom. 



He allows most colonies to swarm more 

 tlian once. You will never allow any colony 

 to swarm more than once, and will make 

 some effort to keep them from swarming at all. 



He does not give a second super until the 

 first is removed, and appears never to have 

 on a hive more than one super at a time. 

 You will, as soon as the first super is about 

 half filled, raise it up and put an empty one 

 under it, and a third one under the second 

 when the second is perhaps half filled, and 

 sometimes you will have 4, 5 or 6 supers on 

 a hive at one time. 



He never requeens nor kills off drones. 

 You will be likely to requeen a colony which 

 doesn't do satisfactory work, unless you are 

 satisfied the fault does not lay with the 

 queen; and although you may not kill any 

 drones you will take care that there is not a 

 lot of drone-comb in every hive to rear un- 

 necessary drones. 



He winters outside with no protection. You 

 will have your hives well packed, especially 

 on top, or perhaps better still you will win- 

 ter the bees in the cellar. 



Now let me make up another thing out of 

 my own head. He has no text-book on bee- 

 keeping. You will have a bee-book — more 

 likely two or more. You can get along with- 

 out a bee-paper (but you won't), but you can't 

 get along without a bee-book. Not unless 

 you want to lose money on bees. 



Getting Strong Colonies in South 

 Africa. 



I am an American far from home, and 

 bee-keeping is a hobby of mine, I have about 

 30 colonies of bees, mostly Doolittle strain. 

 I have a few native queens (5 or 6), but 

 will supersede them with Italians, as the wild 

 bees are too vicious. The wild bees are won- 

 derful breeders, breeding practically the year 

 through, and are good honey-gatherers, too, 

 but are so cross that it takes ail the fun 

 out of it. I have known them to sting every- 

 thing in sight within 100 yards from the hive. 

 And it is a common thing for them to kill 

 dogs and fowls. 



The Doolittle Italians are as good, or bet- 

 ter, honey-gatherers, and are very gentle, but 

 I find trouble in keeping a big force of them 

 ready for the harvest, tor when the honey- 

 flow slackens, the queens stop laying; while 

 the natives, if there is honey in the hive, 

 will keep right on breeding. 



Our spring begins about August 1, and in 

 September and early October, there is a light 

 honey-flow. This year I took an average of 

 15 pounds of extracted honey. After this 

 there is no honey or pollen until the rain 

 comes in October or November. This year 

 the rains came the last of November. Ten 

 days ago none of my Italians were laying, 

 although I gave them a little syrup each night 

 for about 10 days. Now I find queens are 

 just beginning to lay, and a little pollen is 

 coming in. We have had 7 or 8 inches of 

 rain, and the main honey-flow will come in 

 about the New Year. 



Remember, this is our summer. The tem- 

 perature before the rain was around 90, Bees 

 were as quiet as in the winter time and not 

 breeding. I would like a suggestion as to 

 how to get a hive full of bees in time for thii 

 main harvest. The harvest comes before the 

 queen is laying to her full capacity, and with 



