JULY 15. 1915 



575 



to make as many swarms; therefore I decid- 

 ed to wait another year hefore rei)oitiiig, as 

 J wanted to try the phiii out thoroughly un- 

 der different conditions; so last year we 

 made ahout tifty swarms by this plan, and 

 1 don't remember that we bad a single 

 failure. 



As before mentioned, our plan was given 

 in detail in the ^larch loth number of 

 Gleanings. 1 will here repeat it in brief. 



Having found a colony with queen-cells 

 we begin our treatment. If tlie hive has a 

 loose bottom so it (the hive) may be used 

 as an upper story, so much the better. In 

 this case, find the queen and place her on 

 a comb containing but little brood and a 

 few bees, and place in an empty hive, fill- 

 ing the rest of the hive with empty combs, 

 and place on the stand after setting the 

 hive of brood aside. Frames of foundation 

 may be used, but are not as good. In case 

 foundation is used I would take (in addi- 

 tion to the one comb with the queen and a 

 little brood) two frames containing little or 

 no brood from the hive of brood, first 

 brushing off the bees so they will be with 

 the brood. Now place a queen-excluder on 

 the new brood-chamber and two or more 

 extraeting-supers of empty combs on top 

 (we use shallow supers^ with the hive of 

 brood put on last. Fill any extra space 

 with dummies and leave till the next visit 

 in seven or eight days, when they are moved 

 to a new stand. To insure that no young 

 queens hatch during the time, at the time of 

 making the change tear out the capped cells, 

 leaving all those not capped. Of course the 

 swarm in the lower hive will be made up 

 of returning f^eld bees all old enough to fly. 

 It will be seen that this result is radically 

 different than in the case with a shaken 

 swarm with bees of all ages, and therein is 

 the secret of its success, in my opinion. 



In this connection I notice Mr. TowufeCiul 

 says, if he does not find the queen the lirst 

 lime looking them over he shakes off six 

 frames of brood, leaving bees and queen 

 below, and raising the brood above. It looks 

 to me very inconsistent, for he is simply 

 making a " shook " swarm, and I siiould 

 say they would be just as likely to swarm 

 as any " shook " swarm. In other words, 

 it seems to me f i-iend Townsend overlooks an 

 important point right here; for although 

 our methods are alike in so far as putting 

 the brood and queen-cells in process of 

 building beyond the intervening super, nev- 

 ertheless he allows the young bees (many of 

 which are cell-builders) to remain with the 

 queen in some cases. 



The first year I practiced this jjlan, thei'e 

 were some cases in which cells were built in 

 the lower story; and as there often were a 

 lot of young bees left sticking to the sides 

 of the hive, or adhering to the two outside 

 frames of honey sometimes left below, I 

 believed those fellows did the work. As 

 most of our hives have tight bottoms I was 

 obliged to leave them on the stand, lifting 

 the brood out to raise up. Therefore since 

 that first year's experience I have taken 

 more pains to get those fellows out of the 

 lower story. Rather than leave a quantity 

 of young bees in the hive below I would 

 brush them out into the hive of brood to be 

 put on top, as 1 feel that is much safer. 



Again, referring to Mr. Townsend's arti- 

 cle, although I attach more importance to 

 eliminating the cell-builders below, still the 

 rest of his management is the same as mine; 

 and one expression of his I can heartily 

 indorse in which he says of those bees in 

 the top story, " They will finish up as nice 

 a bunch of queen-cells as one wants to 

 see.'' 



Oberlin, Ohio. 



THE "LONG IDEA" HIVE; SOME FURTHER DETAILS SUPPLEMEINT- 

 ING THE EDITOR'S ARTICLE ON THE SAME SUBJECT, FEB. 15 



BY 0. 0. POPPLETON 



While any one style of hives, like all 

 other instruments used to obtain -certain 

 results, is not superior in all respects to 

 other styles used for the same purposes, yet 

 all may and probably do have some advan- 

 tages and some disadvantages not possessed 

 by other styles. The original Langstroth 

 make of hives, almost identical with the 

 present-day dovetailed hive, seems still to 

 retain its ascendency over other styles in 

 ordinary use in the production of section 

 honey; but in my own production of ex- 



tracted honey it has not given me as good 

 ]-esults or satisfaction as has the long sin- 

 gle-stoi'v hive with deeper frames. This 

 doesn't mean that the long hive has no 

 faults the other does not possess, but that 

 on the whole its advantages are greater than 

 are its disadvantages. 



I presume tliat I have had more practical 

 experience with this form of hive than has 

 any other beekeeper in this counti-y if not 

 in the world, having used it over forty 

 years, while at the same time I have had 



