1901 



GLEANINGS IN BKE CULTURI':. 



235 



dropped. Well, for a fact many bee-keepers 

 that are not right to the front in every thing 

 kindo' look on the term "red-clover queen" 

 as being a synonym for "humbug." 



Let color do lier best, and gentleness have 

 its daj' ; but rest assured that the bee-keeping 

 world is making the grandest stride in its his- 

 tory by falling in line with the long-tongue 

 movement. 



Beeville, Tenn. 



PREVENTION OF SWARMIXG. 



More about those "Brushed Swarms;" Large 



Hives and Under what Condilions they will 



Ihtck or Curtail Swarming. 



BY L. bXACHELHAUSEN. 



In Stray Straws, Nov. 15, Dr. C. C. Miller 

 says that my article, p. 8-10, is not plain enough 

 where I said, " Some time the next day. 

 the lower story of the brood-chamber is re- 

 moved." In the third line of that article I 

 said, " For my management a two-story brood- 

 chamber is needed." In fact, I use two 53^- 

 inch ten-frame supers as a brood-chamber. If 

 a swarm is brushed I give at first two such su- 

 pers with frames — containing starters only — 

 because the bees will stay better and will 

 cluster more readily if the hive is large enough 

 for the swarm. I remove one of these stories 

 the next day, because the swarm will build all 

 worker-cells if the brood-chamber is small. 

 Besides this I give a brood-comb when the 

 swarm is framed, and remove it the next day. 

 This brood-comb is not absolutely necessary, 

 but the bees will sooner cluster around this 

 comb, and will conduct themselves quieter. 

 When the bees are not very much inclined to 

 swarm, this brood comb can remain in the 

 hive ; but some years I have to remove the 

 brood-combs the same evening or the next 

 morning, or the whole colony will sometimes 

 swarm out and abscond if nobody is present 

 to rehive it. 



All this is of minor importance, and accord- 

 ing to circumstances we can proceed different- 

 ly. The essential part of the management is, 

 that the colony is Drought into the condition 

 of a swarm ; and the purpose of so doing is, 

 first, to avoid all natural swarming (an im- 

 portant item for out-apiaries); and, second, to 

 fix the colony at the proper time in the best 

 condition for storing honey in the supers. 

 The plan is very similar to that described by 

 II. Lathrop, pages 684 and 872, and by A. 

 Norton, page 873. In the Progressive, F. L. 

 Thompson describes another very similar way. 



By an experience of many years I know 

 laow to avoid the absconding of these swarms 

 as described above. The plan described by 

 A. C. Miller, in the Revieiv, and mentioned 

 in Gi^EANiNGS, page 921, is essentially the 

 same as that described by me, and differs 

 in details only. So far as I know, the first 

 hee-keeper who recommended the forming of 

 swarms by brushing the bees from the combs 

 into a new hive, and setting this hive on the 

 stand of the parent colony, or on a new stand, 

 was the lateC. J. H. Gravenhorst, in Germany, 

 well known to the older readers of Glean- 



ings, for which journal he has written many 

 interesting articles. We have only changed 

 his method according to our hives, and utiliz- 

 ed it for the production of comb honey in 

 sections. 



I have to mention again an advantage of 

 this management. By using large brood- 

 chambers, or by enlarging smaller ones by giv- 

 ing shallow extracting- supers at the right 

 time, we can prevent swarming to a certain 

 extent; and my observation during about 18 

 years is the same as Mr. Lathrop's — that from 

 year to year the bees will be less inclined to 

 swarm, if large hives are used in this way. 

 This advantage of large hives is doubted by 

 some bee-keepers, some of them going as far 

 as to say this non-swarming theory is a farce. 

 The fact is, some years and some localities 

 are so favorable for brood-rearing, and conse- 

 quently for swarming, that even a colony 

 worked for extracted honey in a very large 

 hive filled with combs will occasionally swarm. 

 If I find so much brood in a certain hive that 

 a simple calculation will show that the queen 

 must have laid 3000 or more eggs daily on an 

 average for 21 days, I know at once that this 

 colony will probaVjly swarm, no matter how 

 many supers I add. Only the commencement 

 of a very good and fast honey-flow will pre- 

 vent swarming in such colonies. 



To explain this it would be necessary to 

 give a whole theory on swarming. Here I 

 will say that a colony will swarm under the 

 same circumstances as soon as the number of 

 eggs laid daily by the queen remains the same, 

 or is diminishing from any cause. As long as 

 this number is increasing, no swarm need be 

 expected. See Gleanings, 1899, p. 926. If, 

 in my out-apiaries, I find too much brood in 

 my hives, I brush my colonies at once from 

 the brood-combs and give them starters only. 

 With colonies worked for extracted honey 

 this is necessary only in extremely good years. 

 With colonies worked for comb honey I do 

 this brushing as soon as the main honey-flow 

 commences, for the purpose of getting the 

 colony in the best condition to start to work 

 in the sections, and at the same time prevent 

 swarming. 



If large hives are used to prevent swarming, 

 we have to consider that a large hive should 

 contain a large number of empty cells in 

 which the queen can lay eggs. I know that a 

 colony in a large hive only half filled with 

 combs may swarm, especially if the queen is 

 old. It is not the large hive itself that pre- 

 vents swarming ; but the large number of 

 empty cells available for the queen will pre- 

 vent swarming, and even this is true to a rea- 

 sonable extent only, as mentioned above. 



Converse, Texas, Dec. 12. 



DOMINICA, THE SWITZERLAND OF THE WEST 

 INDIES. 



BY W. K. MORRISON. 



St. Pierre, Martinique, was the next stop- 

 ping-place of our steamer the Solent, of the 

 West India Royal Mail. Ever since reading 

 Pere Labat's book on the West Indies, and 



