July, 1915. 



243 



American Hee Journal 



A GROUP OF AMATKUK INSPEC'lijRS AT THE CRANDALL Al'IARY IX NEW 



BERLIN. CONN. 



would allow an exhibit to be placed in 

 his window, and if it is done at a time 

 when a frame or two of bees can be 

 shown, with a printed card such as 

 " Find the Queen," would serve as a 

 means to attract attention and get peo- 

 ple to thinking of honey when they 

 otherwise would hardly give it a pass- 

 ing thought. A great many people re- 

 gard honey as a luxury, and will only 

 use it sparingly, or in case of colds. I 

 find a good many who use honey and 

 lemon juice for colds, and seem to 

 think it an unfailing remedy. 



I am enclosing pictures of our two 

 children who take delight in working 

 with the bees, and are shown with a 

 mating hive open. No. 2 shows them 

 with some of our friends from the city 

 who are handling bees for the first 

 time, and No. 3 shows the apiary of Mr. 

 Pratt, of Wethersfield.Conn. The Con- 

 necticut Beekeepers' Association held 

 their annual convention at his home 

 last summer. Mr. Pratt is the gentle- 

 man in the middle with his coat off. 



Berlin, Conn. 



Crandall Apiary 



Send Questions either to the office of the American Bee Journal or direct to 



Dr. C. C. Miller. Marengo, III. 



He does not answer bee-keepine questions by mail. 



Swarm Prevention 



When a hive is "full of bees" add a 

 super full of frames with comb and founda- 

 tion: when the added body is fairly filled 

 up. set an excluder between the two About 

 a week or ten days later separate the two 

 hive-bodies, putting the one added on the 

 old stand and the original hive-body beside 

 it. so that the queen will be in the added 

 hive-body on the old stand, which is to be 

 ascertained by the presence of eggs in one 

 hive-body or the other tj/h-r four days. Then 

 the queen is to be transferred to the hive- 

 body that was added and now on the old 

 stand. The question is: 



I The queen having been separated four 

 days from the bees on the old stand, could 

 she alone or with the frame of bees she is 

 on be put at once into the hive thereon, or 

 would it be indispensable for safety to cage 

 her for a day or two. before releasing her in 

 the hive ? 



2. How long should it require an average 

 beekeeper to examine 50 colonies, as should 

 be done about every eight days ? 



3. When having old combs in frames 

 taken from colonies that died during the 

 winter, to what extent is it good practice to 

 dig the dead bees out of the comb ? 



Pennsylvania. 



Answers.— I. If the bees are entirely 

 queenless it would be quite safe to give the 

 queen without caging. There is. however, a 

 possibility that since the excluder was given 

 a virgin may have been reared, and of course 

 that would jeopardize the queen. Of course, 

 you could forestall that by killing cells. 



2. To go through the 50 colonies should 

 make a fair day's work. 



3, Brush off all the bees you can. hold the 

 frame flat and shake vigorously, shaking 

 some of the bees out of the cells; leave 

 those that will not shake out for the bees to 

 dig out; they can do it cheaper than you can. 



Increase of Colonies 



1. If a colony is ready to swarm on May 15. 

 and the honey-flow starts June i. can 1 in- 

 crease by taking the f/d queen and two 

 frames of sealed brood from it and forma 

 new colony ? 



2. Is it safe to form a colony by taking 

 frames of sealed brood and Queen-ceUs in- 

 stead of i^uecn f 



3. When taking old queens and sealed 

 brood is it necessary that I look further to 

 see if I leave any queen-cells ? 



4. If this will work, could I feed a wf-rf r.'/- 

 u«i through July by making one continuous 

 honey flow and then divide them again dur- 

 ing the fall flow as per above; 50 percent is 

 all I want ? 



5. If this method will work, would it add 

 to my honey yield by not letting them 

 swarm ? Subscriber. 



Answers— I. Yes; but you're likely to 

 have a high old time with swarming when 

 the virgins hatch out in the old hive ten 

 days or more after you remove the queen. 

 ■You can prevent that by destroying all 

 queen-cells but one eight days after remov- 



ing the uueen. A little better way. if you 

 don't mind the trouble, is to go to the hive 

 each evening after eight or ten days and 

 listen for the piping of the first virgin. 

 When you hear that, go to the hive the next 

 morning and destroy .;// queen-cells. That 

 will leave the free queen in full possession 

 without swarming, and no danger of further 

 swarming until the next year. 



2. \'ery unsafe if no precaution whatever 

 is used. For when you look a day or two 

 later you are likely to find the bees mostly 

 gone and the brood chilled. After putting 

 the two frames with adhering bees in your 

 nucleus hive, shake into it the bees from 

 one or two more frames. Then see that 

 your hive is closed bee-tight so that not a 

 bee can get out for two or three days. 

 It's not a bad plan to stuff grass or 

 green leaves into the entrance, plugging it 

 tight and hard. The green stuff will dry 

 and shrink, and in two or three days the 

 bees will dig their way out. 



3. No, there will be eggs and young brood 

 from which the bees can rear all the queens 

 they want. 



a. Yes. if the fall flow is good enough. But 

 I hardly understand your saying you want 

 only 50 percent increase. If you divide each 

 of the old colonies once, that will be 100 per- 

 cent increase, and if you divide the second 

 time it will be 200. 



5. Yes. if you depend mostly upon the 

 early flow. 



Stvarm Prevention — Increase— Sealed or Unsealed 

 Larvae 



1. In September American Bee Journal, 

 page iif', C. F. Greening gives a plan for the 

 prevention of swarming Please tell us how 

 you would go at using the plan for fomd 

 honey. 



2. For increase he sets the hive 16 feet 

 away, leaving on the stand another hive 

 with a frame of brood, allowing the field 

 bees to return and rear a queen. Please 

 five your opinion of the plan. 



3. As to removing the colony at least 16 

 feet away, and putting a super on that; 

 would you for comb honey expect to have to 

 do anything else ? 



4. In ' Root's ABC and X Y Z. " page 553. 

 1013 edition. " a frame of unsealed larvae " is 

 thrust into the bees of a swarm, so that they 

 may crawl upon it. Are unsealed larvte 

 better than sealed for this purpose? 



Subscriber. 



Answers.— I. For comb honey I wouldn't 

 try to use the plan Couldn't. The essence 

 of the plan is to keep brood constantly over 

 the super. A number of times I have tried 

 brood over a section super, and always the 

 cappings of the sections were darkened. I 

 suppose by bits of wax brought down from 

 the brood-combs above. 



2. The ease with which the division is 

 made commends the plan; but it has objec- 

 tions. The young queen must be started by 

 field bees, which are past the age fordoing 

 such work well: and to rear queens of best 

 quality there should be bees of the proper 

 age. The colony on the old stand is made 

 up entirely of field bees, and these will be 

 dying off daily with no progeny of the young 

 queen to replace them for about three 

 weeks. 



3 No; and if the season should be rather 

 short you wouldn't need even to put on a 

 super. For normally there would be no bees 

 to go afield under 16 days; and although un- 

 der stress bees will begin gathering sooner 

 than that, it would be some time before 

 enough would be gathered for more than 

 daily use. 



4. As between sealed and unsealed larvae, 

 if you have either kind alone. I think sealed 

 would work better than unsealed. When, 

 however, you take a frame having unsealed 



