May, 1913 



American Hee Journal 



dozen bunches, so you see each acre 

 brings in quite an income. He says 

 he can raise celery and put it on the 

 cars at $10ii per acre. Mr. Reed will 

 have several acres of celery the com- 

 ing year, and will also raise consider- 

 able cauliflower. He has a boy grow- 

 ing up of whom, he says, he is going to 

 make a bee-keeper. He is planning 

 to build his apiary up to 100 or 200 

 colonies for the boy to keep. Mr. 

 Reed hires men only, saying boys are 

 unsatisfactory, not meaning his own. 

 He has no use for chickens, saying 

 that nn man who figures his time worth 

 anything will spend much time with 

 them. He says,for the time and money 

 invested, /i/'s bees fay better than aiiy- 

 thinf; else on his flaee. He has 17 acres, 

 and is building new buildings entirely 

 of concrete. 



To the southwest of Pueblo, up near 

 the Greenhorn Mountains, a good 

 many bees are kept. Rye, Crow, Abbey, 

 Beulah, Siloam, and Greenhorn, are the 

 post-offices ; none of them, however, 

 on anv railroad, so this section of the 



county is hard of access. 



A meeting of the bee-men of Pueblo 

 county was held Feb. 29th, and while 

 only 8 were present (not counting my- 

 self), petitions were taken away for the 

 securing of signatures of bee-keepers, 

 asking the' County Commissioners to 

 set aside a fund sufficient to pay for 

 adequate inspection of bees. The pros- 

 pects are good for getting something 

 done, as the work has been entirely 

 neglected for the last few years. 



The meeting was held in the club 

 rooms of the Pueblo Commerce Club, 

 and the cordiality of the Club was 

 greatly appreciated by all the bee-men 

 present. It is probable that a county 

 bee-keepers' society will be formed, 

 and if this is done the campaign against 

 foul brood can be more effectually 

 waged. 



The county organization is a need in 

 many counties in Colorado, and it is 

 possible to keep up interest if meetings 

 are not held too often, and are held at 

 convenient times. 



Southern 



Beedom^ 



Ci^nductccI by Louis H. Scholi . New Braiinfcls. Tex. 



Those Divisible Brood-Chamber Hives 



Ur. C. C. Miller tries to give the 

 writer a " swat," on page 102, in regard 

 to the divisible brood-chamber hive 

 used by us. He quotes Mr. Samuel 

 Sinimins as advocating a hive with 

 frames ys inches deeper than the shal- 

 low Langstroth, and places the writer 

 on the opposite side as claiming that 

 the dei)th should be -'i-U inches shal- 

 lower than the Langstroth. I wonder 

 what some of our most able and oldest 

 experienced persons must be thinking 

 when they draw the conclusion that we 

 advocate such a shallow hive. The 

 truth of the matter is that we advocate, 

 and have been advocating for more 

 than ]•') years, a i/eefter hive than the 

 Langstroth, and the way we obtain this 

 depth is by using two shallow hive- 

 bodies for each brood-chamber. This 

 makes a still deeper hive than that ad- 

 vocated by Mr. Simmins, the British 

 authority. 



In other words, it gives us the same 

 deptli as the deep hives used by the 

 Dadants, quoted by Dr. Miller, or the 

 same as the "jumbo " hive with very 

 deep frames, about which there was 

 such a commotion a number of years 

 ago. We have tried these deep-frame 

 liives thoroughly, and found the objec- 

 tions that we attributed to the Lang- 

 stroth depth of hives to be still greater. 

 In other words, the trouble of having 

 a solid rim of stores next to the top- 

 bars, and above the brood, increases 

 with increased depth of the brood- 

 combs. 



An advantage of the deeper combs, 

 however, is that the brood-rearing may 

 be increased over that in the shallow 

 Langstroth frames, since the comb sur- 

 face is so much larger and the brood- 

 nest is not so easily crowded as with 



the Langstroth hive. Keeping these 

 matters in view when looking about 

 for a change in hive construction or 

 manipulations by which an increased 

 amount of brood-chamber room could 

 be obtained, while at the same time the 

 objections to the rim of solid stores 

 above the brood-nest proper would be 

 eliminated, aided materially in the 

 selection of the divisible brood-cham- 

 ber hives. 



The solid stores above the brood- 

 nest are a detriment, in that bees, as a 

 rule, are loathe to store above such 

 stores, and hence are kept from doing 

 satisfactory work in the supers. In- 

 stead of working in the latter they per- 

 sist in adding to the already detrimen- 

 tal stores in the brood-combs, and 

 crowd out the queen for want of laying 

 room. The result is apparent — slow 

 and retarded work in the supers, and a 

 decreased amount of brood-rearing 

 and a consequent weakening of the 

 forces of the colonies. While the 

 deeper hives, such as used by the Da- 

 dants for example, give stronger colo- 

 nies of bees than the shallow Lang- 

 stroth, on account of the greater cornb 

 surface; the super work is less satis- 

 factory since more honey is stored in 

 the upper part of the deep brood- 

 combs. 



It is perhaps well for us to call at- 

 tention to the matter of locality, and 

 the extent to which locality plays a 

 part in various ways. Dr. Miller, it 

 seems, has overlooked this matter in 

 arguing that there is no rim of honey 

 to bother later in the brood-rearing 

 season, as the bees use up the honey 

 clear up to tlie lop-bar and till the cells 

 with brood. He further attributes the 

 cause of the rim of honey perhaps to 

 poor queens, or possibly to differences 



of climate, pasturage, and the seasons ; 

 however, not putting as much stress 

 on these causes as he might. His sus- 

 picions that the combs in the deeper 

 frames of the Langstroth hives had 

 more to do with it, is not a strong ar- 

 gument in the premises, since we have 

 had very little trouble from sagged 

 foundation near the top-bars. In the 

 first place, we used a heavy enough 

 grade of foundation with proper wir- 

 ing in most cases, and in addition to 

 this, diagonal w'iring with the horizon- 

 tal wires aided materially in prevent- 

 ing such sagging. The same rim of 

 honey existed in the most perfect 

 combs. 



We are sure that locality has more 

 to do with it, especially as regards the 

 character of the honey-flows. While 

 Dr. Miller's bees may use up all the 

 honey in brood-rearing in the spring, 

 the general rule in our own locality is 

 that a little more new honey is brought 

 into the hive daily than is used by the 

 bees. This honey is stored as close to 

 the brood as possible in the upper part 

 of the combs, and gives the trouble 

 mentioned. We presume that this will 

 be experienced in all localities where 

 there is a long, slow and steady honey- 

 yield in the early part of the season, 

 such as we have here, and in such, like 

 ours, the question of how best to re- 

 move this honey is an important one. 



The old way was removing it by the 

 use of the honey-extractor, but this 

 has long been found impracticable by 

 the writer, besides being a disagreeable 

 job; and the result, a product of ex- 

 tracted honey not very palatable, owing 

 to the presence of unsealed brood of 

 various stages in the combs. By means 

 of the divisible brood-chamber hive, 

 however, it takes but a moment to 

 place the upper shallow story below 

 the lower one and let the bees move 

 the honey. It not only serves this pur- 

 pose, but the handling of the honey by 

 the bees stimulates the colony to further 

 brood-rearing, and creates more laying 

 room for the queen. This, done just 

 before giving the supers above, puts 

 the colonies in the best possible condi- 

 tion to force them into the supers with 

 a vim and vigor not possessed by col- 

 onies left alone, and simply having the 

 super placed on their brood-chamber. 



■The same kind of an exchange of 

 stories as mentioned before, just pre- 

 vious to the swarming season, will pro- 

 long the desire to swarm considerably. 

 If the colony has had time to re- 

 arrange the brood-nest after such a 

 change long enough before the swarm- 

 ing season is over, there is still a pos- 

 sible chance of their swarming. The 

 addition of a shallow story of extract- 

 ing combs or foundation, by slipping it 

 betzceen the two Stories of the brood- 

 chamber, will " knock swarming in the 

 head " more effectively than any method 

 that we have practised. The upper 

 story, in this case, will now become a 

 shallow extracting su])er as the brood 

 is crowded out, and as the honey-flow 

 opens, the C(niib-honey supers are given 

 underneath this. This is the most ideal 

 way of procedure to secure the best 

 possible work in the supers imme- 

 diately, and to produce a maximum 

 amount of surplus honey from a good 

 colony of bees. 



We see how the shallow stories of 



