1901 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



591 



and perfect s3-stem of queen rearing. The fea- 

 ture of having removable shells that can be 

 handled for grafting or when the cells have 

 been completed, is excellent. There are sev- 

 eral other unique ideas that Swarthmore has 

 that will be described later. — Ed ] 



» • •••>• • •-♦ 



THE HIVE I USE. 



Producing Comb and Extracted Honey : Eight and 



Ten Frame Langstroth Hives; the Hvde-ischoM 



Divisible-brood-chamber Hives. 



BY LOUIS SCHOLL. 



After considering all of the many good 

 points possessed by some of all the hives be- 

 fore the bee-keepers now, with frames of dif- 

 ferent depths and lengths — eight, ten, and 

 more frames in a brood-chamber, using one 

 deep body for the brood-chamber with shal- 

 low supers for the surplus, and others with 

 two shallow chambers, and also with the su- 

 pers of the same depth, has led me to try a 

 number of hives which will be described fur- 

 ther on. 



Starting with the eight-frame Dovetailed 

 hive, which was then considered the standard 

 size, I thought myself up to the times. But 

 these soon proved to be too small for this 

 southern climate, with its long flows, so the 

 ten-framers were considered. These proved 

 to be some better ; but the depth of the Lang- 

 stroth frame proved to be objectionable. This 

 was true when producing comb honey in sec- 

 tion-supers above the brood-frames. There 

 was trouble from the bees filling the deep 

 frames with the honey that ought to go into 

 the sections — this to a greater extent during a 

 slow flow, and especially along the top edge 

 of the comb above the brood ; and after this 

 honey was once sealed, the bees were quite 

 loth to store surplus above such sealed stores, 

 causing them to loaf and to hang out in great 

 festoons all over the front of the hive. 



Besides, the queen was also crowded out, as 

 the bees filled every cell with honey as fast as 

 the young bees hatched out, although there 

 was plenty of room in the super above. 



Now, the question was, how to avoid this 

 trouble and how to get that honey out of the 

 way and into the sections, and this also with 

 as little labor as possible. 



Of course, this could be done by invertirg 

 the whole hive and letting it remain for a few 

 days for the bees to remove the honey ; but 

 this causes a great deal of trouble and labor. 

 Here, now, is a good point in favor of revers- 

 ible frames, but I am not an advocate of such. 



Then I found that it can be accomplished 

 to a great extent by using a divisible-brood- 

 chamber hive by exchanging the upper case 

 (which has the honey along the top) with the 

 lower one, which puts the honey in the center 

 of the brood-nest where it will be removed by 

 the bees. 



As there now is brood in the frames which 

 are now above, the bees are compelled to store 

 the honey in the sections above ; and by re- 

 moving the honey in the brood-chamber the 

 tees also provide more breeding room for the 



queen. By exchanging the cases of the brood- 

 chamber in this way at certain times during 

 the main honey-flow it is possible to get near- 

 ly all the honey of that flow into the sections. 



Then shallow frames possess; a great many 

 other advantages over deep frames, which I 

 learned when using shallow frames in supers 

 above my standard Langstroth hives, which 

 led me to adopt a hive with shallow frames 

 throughout. Efptcially when running for 

 extracted honey, the hive consisting of two, 

 three, or more cases with all shallow frames, 

 one is not bothered with frames of different 

 depths, and all cases are interchangeable. 



The;e cases are more convenient to handle, 

 as they are not as heavy as full-depth supers, 

 and are also easier to remove when full, as, by 

 smoking the bees thoroughly when raising 

 the cover, they can be readily driven down 

 out of such shallow supers, when they are ta- 

 ken off practically free from bees, and with- 

 out any brushing of bees. 



Then the shallow frames are easier to uncap, 

 as one draw of the knife uncaps a whole side 

 of the comb, while it takes longer vdth deep 

 frames, besides being awkward to handle, and 

 the danger of broken combs. 



Shallow frames I prefer, too, for a great 

 many other purposes in the apiary ; and as 

 there is not very much need of handling the 

 frames individually except in a few instances, 

 the hive is mostly handled by cases with the 

 whole set of frames ; and all that is necessary 

 when examining colonies for any purpose at 

 any time is to tilt the upper case of the brood- 

 chamber back, and then one can get a full 

 view of the brood-nest. 



In this way it is quite easy to ascertain the 

 conditions and strength of a colony at any 

 time, and also during the swarming season, 

 when looking for queen- cells. If there are 

 any present in any hive they will generally be 

 found on the bottom edge of the upper frames. 



When providing more room for the queen 

 in early spring, or for honey later on, one of 

 these shallow cases is added, without the bad 

 result of giving too much room at once, as is 

 mostly the case when giving full-depth supers. 



Many other points in favor of shallow 

 frames used in connection with such a hive 

 could be recited ; but as time and space do 

 not permit, I will now give a description of 

 the hive which, after being used in the apiary, 

 has given good satisfaction. 



The brood-chamber consists of two shallow 

 dovetailed cases, standard ten-frame L. size, 

 but only 53/ inches deep each, both giving a 

 brood-chamber 11^^ inches in depth. 



Each case holds a set of 10 shallow Hoffman 

 self-spacing frames, the same in size as the 

 standard L frame, but only 5^ inches deep ; 

 this makes 20 frames, with a comb surface of 

 nearly 12 Langstroth frames, thus providing a 

 large brood-nest. 



The Danzy bottom-board and cover are used 

 on this hive. 



The same shallow frame cases are used wht n 

 producing extracted honey, and the super- 

 shell of the section supers is one and the same 

 kind. 



The comb-honey super is the same in every 



