April, 1910. 



American Tiee Journal 



and have the queen confined to tlie lower 

 story under the excluder, what percent would 

 try to swarm? New York. 



Answers. — 1. Pretty surely, if no cells above 

 the excluder bad been allowed. 



2. I think so. 



3. I don't know. Possibly not one. 



Vou have used a variation of the Ucniaree 

 plan. Here is the plan: Put all the brood 

 in the second story over the excluder, leaving 

 the queen below with empty combs or founda- 

 tion, destroy all queen-cells at the time of 

 putting up the brood, and also 10 days later. 

 With some this proves an entire preventive 

 of swarming, while others say there are some 

 failures. Wliethcr putting the one brood- 

 cumb below would make any ditTerence I do 

 not know. Neither do 1 know what difference 

 was made by your change of entrance. I 

 should be afraid that when ypu wedge up the 

 second story the larger space would be filled 

 with bur-combs. 



Caging Queen Over a Colony — Other 

 . Questions. 



1. When a queen is taken from a colony, 

 and caged over another, what kind of a cage 

 do you use ? 



2. Do you put candy in the cage ? 



3. Can she be returned to her own colony 

 without introducing ? 



4. How long after a. swarm issues can it 

 and the . original colony be united without 

 fighting? 



5. When pait of a colony is drummed out, 

 can the balance be united with them 31 days 

 later without fighting? 



6. I have directions for uniting bees after 

 the honey-flow, by uniting the brood in Au- 

 gust and September; this leaves a queen and 

 a lot of old bees to dispose of. What would 

 you do with them? 



7. I use S-frame hives on account of their 

 light-weight, for extracting Iioney. Does one 

 storv give enough room for brood, or would 

 an extracting super on top be better? 



Tennessee. 

 .Answer. — The cage that is listed in the 

 catalogs as Miller's queen-catcher and intro- 

 ducing cage, although I vary the construction. 

 Uut almost any cage will do. 



2. Sure. 



3. 1 es, if she has not been away more than 

 a day or two ; but sometimes she may have 

 acquired a strange scent that the bees do not 



.like. 



4. I don't know. It depends somewhat on 

 circumstances. I should guess that there 

 might be trouble sometimes in a week, and 

 sometimes none in a month. But in the latter 

 case it would be when honey is coming in 

 well, and when almost anything would unite 

 peaceably. But mind you, I don'* know. 



5. Generally, yes. 



6. I can hardly understand how such a 

 course would be advised unless it were in- 

 tended to kilt the old queen and old bees. 



7. For a good strain of bees 8 frames are 

 not enough for the building up, although they 

 may be enough after the harvest begins. But 

 even then more room might be better for ex- 

 tracted honey. 



Making Increase — Shade-Boards — 8 



or 10 Frame Hive — Feeding 



Honey-Dew, 



I. I have 8 colonies of bees, and would like 

 to increase to about 16. I have all Italian 

 queens, and do not care to select any particu- 

 lar queen to rear the young queen for the 

 increase, as I have no time to watch for 

 natural swarms, and would like to try a 

 way of making artificial increase. The fol- 

 lowing is my plan — let me know wliat you 

 think about it: 



I am going to get my colonies as strong 

 as possible before the honey-flow, and when 

 the swarming season comes I will look through 

 them every few days, and if I find any build- 

 ing queen-cells, and preparing to swarm, I 

 will take a new hive with frames filled with 

 full sheets of foundation, and go to the colony 

 which is getting reauv to swarm, and lift out 

 one frame with eggs and young larvae and the 

 queen, hang it in the new hive, then remove 

 the parent colony, and place this new hive 

 with frame of eggs, larvae and queen on the 

 old stand, and then brush about ^ of the 

 bees remaining in the parent colony, and 

 piace this new hive with frame of eggs, 

 larvae and queen on the old stand, and then 

 brush about J4 of the bees remaining in the 

 parent colony in front of the new hive, then 

 move the parent colny in front of the new- 

 hive, then move the parent colony to a new 



location and destroy all the queen-cells ex- 

 cept the two best ones. Would this plan work? 



2. Do you ket-p shade boards on your hives 

 during the hot season, or do you let them 

 stand in the open sun? 



3. What is the color of a drone from a 

 leather-colored Italian queen? I bought a red 

 clover queen from a breeder in Kentucky and 

 her drones are almost jet black. Was she a 

 full-blooded queen ? 



4. I adopted the S-frame hive when I com- 

 menced with bees, but I think I made a 

 mistake by not taking the lO-frame. I need 

 some more hives. Would you advise me to 

 take the 10-frame, or would it be better to 

 stick to the 8- frame exclusively ? 



y. I have some honey which I would like 

 to feed my bees in the spring; mix it with 

 water, half and half, and give each colony 

 '/i pint at sundown every day in an Alexander 

 feeder. Would this cause the bees to start 

 robbing? Illinois. 



Answers. — 1. Your plan will work if the 

 queen-cells are sealed. Indeed, you would 

 hardly need to destroy any cells, for the col- 

 ony will be so much weakened by having H 

 of its bees taken away that it will hardly think 

 of swarming. Besides, if you leave 2 cells 

 you will be about as sure of swarming as if 

 you leave a dozen. If the queen-cells are un- 

 sealed, they may not be well enough fed to 

 make good queens in so weak a colony. 



2. Sometimes I have used shade-boards, but 

 mostly my hives have the shade of trees, not 

 so much for the bees as for my own comfort 

 when working at them. 



3. Pure Italian drones vary very much, from 

 being mostly yellow to very dark. If the 

 workers of the yellow-colored Italian show the 

 3 bands, you may call the drones pure, no 

 matter what color. 



4. So long as the same frames are used in 

 either, it would not cost you much to try the 

 10-frame hives side by side with the 8-frame, 

 and then you could tell better than any one 

 else which suits best. All this if you run for 

 comb honey. If you run for extracted honey, 

 I would advise you to change to 10-frame 

 hives without any experimenting. 



5. No, if you keep all well covered so that 

 bees from outside can not get at the feed next 

 morning. 



Transferring — Spring Feeding — Old 



Comb Foundation — Jumbled 



Combs. 



I have kept a few bees for 3 years, and am 

 now starting with 70 colonies. I will devote 

 all my time to the bees. I am using 8-frame 

 hives, and running for comb honey. I have 

 bought 10 box-hives, and want to transfer the 

 bees to frame hives. When should I transfer? 



2. Should I transfer from odd-sized hive's to 

 standard? 



3. I am now feeding ^ pint of thin sugar 

 syrup once a day to each colony, in Alexander 

 feeders. Am I doing right? 



4. W'hen should I put in new queens, and 

 which are the best, Southern or Northern bred 

 queens? 



5. I have about 40 pounds of light founda- 

 iton, 2 years old, and it seems dry. Should 

 I use it, or have it worked over? 



6. I have a number of hives in which combs 

 are built cross- wise, and others in which the 

 frames are stuck fast and combs built over. 

 Should I loosen them all up, and try to have 

 the frames all worked free so that I can handle 

 them at any time? If so, when should I work 

 them over? 



7. Would it be better to transfer the bees 

 from hives with crossed combs to new hives? 



8. Have you queens to sell? If so, please 

 quote me prices. I will want 12 or more. I 

 have hybrids now, and want a good strain of 

 Italians. 



9. I think my bees are in fairly good con- 

 dition, and I want to increase all I can this 

 season. I will try the Alexander plan of in- 

 crease, or can you suggest a better? 



Kansas. 

 Answers. — 1. You can transfer in fruit- 

 bloom, or perhaps better wait till the colony 

 swarms Hive the swarm in the right kind 

 of a hive, and then break up the old hive 21 

 days later, melting the combs, unless you pre- 

 fer to transfer the best combs and form an- 

 other colony. 



2. Not so very important, but on the whole 

 it is better to have only one size of frame in 

 the apiary. 



3. Maybe, and maybe not. Likely a little 

 safer without the feeding, unless the weather 

 is very warm for the first half of March. In 

 my own practise I feel it is safer to do no feed- 



ing except to make sure there is abundance of 

 feed in the hive. 



4. All things considered it may be well to 

 wait till June, although if you want to rear 

 queens from your new stock you can get one 

 earlier from the South, or else a last year's 

 queen from the North. There ought to be 

 no difference between Northern and Southern 

 queens, only a queen may be reared earlier 

 South than North, and a queen reared too 

 early is not likely to prove so good. 



5. The probability is that it is all right to 

 use It as it is. 



6. By all means get them in such shape that 

 each frame may be lifted out. Do it when bees 

 are gathering, at which time they will quickly 

 mend all breakages; and it is better to do it 

 before the combs are filled with honey. In 

 fruit-bloom is a good time. 



7. Not if the old hives are all right. 



8. I don't sell queens except now and then 

 as accommodation, and don't think you would 

 want queens from me, for my best cjuecns are 

 generally hybrids, and there is danger of foul 

 brood here. 



9. It doesn't make so very much difference 

 what plan of increase you use, only so that 

 you manage to have all colonies strong before 

 winter. Remember that it is more important 

 to have a large number of bees in each hive 

 than it is to have a large number of hives with 

 a small number of bees in each. 



Using Old Foundation— Ventilation to 



Prevent Swarming — Using Moldy 



Combs — Getting Swarms Cheap. 



1. Seeinti that article in Gleanings, by F. 

 Creiner, in regard to bees being slow to go to 

 work in last year's foundation rather disturbed 

 my peace of mind, as I have a large quantity 

 of starters (50 pounds) left from the total 

 failure of last year, and suppose you are in the 

 same fix. Part are in the sections and part in 

 the box, as it came from the factory, and 

 it ought to be all right, I should think. 1 

 dislike cutting those out of the aections. as 

 they are put with hot wax, on three sides ala 

 Yoder, which plan I am sure, if you tried 

 once, you would never have any further use 

 for a Daisy machine. It is far faster for me, 

 anyway, than the Daisy, and saves so much 

 trouble with the full sheets buckling so. 



2. How would it do to raise up an ordinary 

 S-frame hive, and put a super under it through 

 the swarming season to help keep them from 

 swarming? Probably the sections would be 

 badly stained. My bees are black, and being 

 near the house and neighbors, I cannot handle 

 them as I would like to, to prevent swarming, 

 etc. I will have the yellow bees some day, I 

 hope. 



3. I have a large number of empty combs 

 which I bought this winter, in which the bees 

 have died, and parts are moulded and smell 

 badly. Where would you store such combs ? 

 I always have them in the cellar to keep the 

 moths away. How can I get my bees to clean 

 them up so I can use them for extracting, and 

 to hive the new swarms? I have noticed that 

 it is hard to get the new swarms to stay in 

 such hives, but I suppose it would help to give 

 them a frame of brood. 



4. Part of the hives I will take to a neigh- 

 boring bee-man, and he will fill them with his 

 new first swarms, for $1.00 a piece. This 

 is quite cheap, is it not, and ought to pay me 

 to do it? The bee-keeper in question has 40 

 or 50 colonies, and some years he does not get 

 enough honey to supply his family. A friend 

 of mine who is rather deaf, and misunderstood 

 what I said, told the bee-keeper how well my 

 bees had done the last year, and what a lot 

 of honey I sold. He said he did not believe 

 it at all. If I got any Honey, it was because 

 I fed my bees sugar and molasses, and the 

 bees had made that into honey. Just think 

 of it, from a man who has kept bees for years 

 and years, and then the ideas and questions 

 that otherwise well posted people will ask about 

 bees are sometimes very amusing. I have 

 noticed when you get a good crop at Marengo, 

 we do here, too, although the conditions must 

 be far different, as this is a very hilly country; 

 but 1908 was a bumper year, also 1903. 



New York. 

 Answers: — 1. If it would be just as conven- 

 ient, I would put foundation in sections and 

 have it on the hives within 24 hours after it 

 left the mill. The fresher it is the better, 

 liut although I believe it makes a difference 

 to have it fresh, I think that difference is 

 very little. As a matter of convenience the 

 foundation is put in my sections some time be- 

 fore the next year. I have had them filled all 

 right after having stood in the suoers for 4 or 

 5 years, so long as they had never been on the 

 hives. Even if they have been on the hives 



