1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



447 



GETTING BEES TO WORK IN SEC- 

 TIONS. 



SOME TIMELY HINTS FHOM FRIEND DOOLITTLE IN 

 REGARD TO THE MATTER. 



ip CORRESPONDENT from Pennsylvania wishes 

 k to know how he win get his bees to work in 

 ft sections when they refuse to do so, and asks, 

 *■ "When the bees refuse to work in sections, 

 and crowd the queen by placing too much 

 honey in the brood combs, can they be made to go 

 into the sections and work, by placing uncapped 

 honey in the brood-nest? " As this question of get- 

 ting the bees to work in the sections is an impor- 

 tant one, and thinking an answer to it might be of 

 interest to the readers of Gleanings just at this 

 time, when we of the North are about putting on 

 sections, I will answer the correspondent through 

 your columns, Mr. Editor, with your permission, as 

 the correspondent says he is a subscriber to your 

 paper. 



Of late years the idea has prevailed, in some 

 minds, that all that is necessary to get the bees into 

 the sections, is to reverse the combs in the hive so 

 as to get the honey which is generally in the tops of 

 the frames, at the bottom, so that the bees would 

 uncap the same and carry it up into the sections; 

 and I presume that this is in part what gave our 

 correspondent the idea he has of placing unsealed 

 honey in the brood-chamber. I have had very lit- 

 tle experience with reversing frames, that little be- 

 ing against the process, except so far as the getting 

 of the combs built out to the frames all around was 

 concerned, but 1 have tried several times to get the 

 bees to work in sections sooner than they other- 

 wise would, by uncapping the honey which was in 

 the hive and changing the fullest combs to the cen- 

 ter of the hive. One year I had three very strong 

 colonies at the beginning of the honey harvest, 

 which had more honey in the brood-chamber than I 

 thought they should have; and being anxious to se- 

 cure as much honey as possible in sections, I 

 thought to make them take this honey from the 

 brood-combs into the sections by the plan suggest- 

 ed by our correspondent. So I went to work and 

 uncapped all of the honey in one of the hives, at 

 the same time taking away twocombs of brood, and 

 placing, instead, two frames which were full of 

 honey, after uncapping it. Not to be badly caught, 

 1 thought I would do this a day or two before I 

 served the others in the same way, to see how the 

 plan worked. In less than an hour the most of the 

 bees were on the outside of the hive, badly daubed 

 with honey, as the weather was quite warm at the 

 time. The next morning the most of the bees were 

 in the hive again, but there was no work being 

 done in the sections; only a few bees loafing about 

 there. The third day I opened the hive to see what 

 had become of the honey, and, behold, quite a share 

 of it was being sealed up again, and nothing in the 

 boxes, the bees having changed it about only a lit- 

 tle to get it in the part of the hive where they want- 

 ed it. Thus failing to accomplish what I desired to, 

 I went to one or two colonies which had commenc- 

 ed to work in sections nicely, and took two boxes of 

 sections, bees and all, and placed them on top of 

 each of these hives, and, to my delight, oomb-build- 

 ing was commenced in the other boxes within 

 twenty-four hours, which work soon spread to the 

 whole part of the sections. When the sections 

 were two-thirds f ull;I examined the hives, and, to 



my surprise, I found that the bees had unsealed 

 and carried to the sections one-half of the honey 

 below, and in place of it there were plenty of eggs 

 and larvse. Thus I learned that bees could be 

 coaxed into sections more easily than they could 

 be driven. Although this was several years ago, 

 yet in every trial which I have conducted along 

 this line, the results have been fully as unsatisfac- 

 tory where I tried to compel the bees to carry un- 

 sealed honey from the brood-chamber into the sec- 

 tions. 



One other thing which I learned, atid a thing 

 which later experience has confirmed, is, that when 

 bees are at work nicely in sections there is no dan- 

 ger of the queen being crowded with honey in the 

 brood-nest. Now, suppose I had extracted the hon- 

 ey from the brood-nest, as some would have us do 

 when bees refuse to work in the sections, what 

 would have been the result? They would have sim- 

 ply filled the space again, not going into the sec- 

 tions at all, for the simple reason that there was no 

 need of working in the sections as long as there 

 was plenty of room to store honey below. I have 

 so far failed entirely to get extracted honey and 

 section honey from the same colony of bees at the 

 same time; and if any one can succeed in doing 

 this, I confess I do not know how it is done. This 

 extracting from the brood-chamber when working 

 for section honey is very much like trying to secure 

 section honey from a very large brood-chamber 

 from whose combs the bees have consumed the 

 most of the honey the winter previous. In this 

 case the bees would begin to store honey largely at 

 the beginning of the harvest in the empty comb 

 still in the lower part of the hive, and there would 

 be four chances out of five in favor of their con- 

 tinuing to do so till they had nearly crowded all 

 brood-rearing from the hive, resulting in no sec- 

 tion honey and a very small colony for winter. 

 The extracting of honey works in the same way so 

 far as the sections are concerned, but it gives a 

 good colony for winter. Sometimes a colony will 

 not work in sections by giving bees and partly filled 

 sections as above; b*ut there is one plan that I have 

 never known to fail: In obstinate cases, get some 

 drone brood and fit it into one or two of the sec- 

 tions, placing them in the center of the section 

 cases; and if honey is coming in from the fields, 

 and your colony is in a condition to work in boxes, 

 you will see them start on either side of this brood 

 at once. After the brood hatches, the bees will 

 store the comb with honey, which will have to be 

 sold as second quality; or you can extract the hon- 

 ey and throw the comb into the wax-extractor as 

 you please. G. M. Doolittle. 



Borodino, N. Y. 



The results of my experiments in this line 

 agree almost exactly with your own. When- 

 ever we used to find a section of drone brood 

 in it, instead of lamenting we used to re- 

 gard it as a prize, because by meaus of it we 

 could readily coax the bees up above, from 

 almost any colony. In fact, 1 have by such 

 means coaxed them above when they really 

 had neither bees nor honey enough to war- 

 rant their going above at all. Perhaps re- 

 versing the combs, in connection with some 

 sections that had been worked on, from 

 some other hive, might answer. It certain^ 

 lv is of great importance that bees be in- 

 duced to commence in the sections when 



