^1861 xj?* 



o 



^^ERICA.^ 



43d YEAP. 



CHICAGO, ILL, JULY 2, 1903. 



Na27. 





Editorial Comments 



] 



The Queen is the Soul of the Colony. — If you are a be- 

 ginner, one of the first truths you should learn is that it is of such 

 great importance to have a good queen in a colony that too much pains 

 can hardly be taken to have your queens of the best. If none of your 

 colonies is up to the mark, then no better investment can be made 

 than to buy a queen of good stock. If all your colonies are good, you 

 may do well enough to leave the entire matter of queen-rearing to the 

 bees, that is, (/ you prefer to allow the bees to swarm naturally. If 

 any one colony is better than the others, then it will pay to be to the 

 trouble of having your young queens mainly, it not entirely, reared 

 from that superior stock. Even if it makes a good deal of extra work, 

 it will pay well in the end. 



Quality of Queens Blailed. — It is pleasant to find a man 

 speaking of his competitors in a broad-minded way. G. M. Doolittle 

 says in Gleanings in Bee-Culture: 



I have not had the experience of some in receiving from queen- 

 breeders queens of which 90 percent turned out poor, or " as worth- 

 less as so many house-flies,'" as one writer puts it. I have rarely re- 

 ceived anything but flrst-elass queens in all I have purchased; and 

 from these queens purchased, and from what I know of several of our 

 queen-breeders, I have not a single doubt that thousands of the 

 queens sent out by queen-breeders are every whit as good as those 

 reared under natural swarming, for I am satisfied that the most of our 

 queen-breeders to-day spare no pains to bring about an equally favor- 

 able condition to that under which natural swarming is conducted, 

 while rearing their queens. 



Shall SectioQ-Supers Be Added Under or Over? — A 



series of articles on comb-honey production, "How to Get All the 

 Sections No. 1 and Fancy," has appeared in Gleanings in Bee-Culture, 

 written by Orel L. Hershiser. After directing to give the first super 

 in the usual way, Mr. Hershiser proceeds: 



If the Bowers are secreting nectar in abundance it will be but a 

 few days till capping of the combs in the super commences, which will 

 indicate the time when a second super should be placed above the first. 

 Capping will now progress in the first super. At the same lime, the 

 honey-laden bees returning from the fields, not all being able to dis- 

 pose of their burdens in the first super, which is rapidly approaching 

 completion, will commence storing in the second, and continue with- 

 out interruption. The opportunities for work in the first super are 

 rapidly diminishing, and day by day fewer bees can be employed 

 there, till finally the super is finished, and its completion will have 

 been accomplished under the most favorable circumstances for thor- 

 ough and complete work. But there is no enforced idleness, for the 

 upper super furnishes store-room for all the nectar that can not be 

 stored in the first one. In due time capping will commence in the 

 upper or second super, if the honey-fiow continues, which indicHtes 

 the time when the capping in the first is finished. The first super may 

 now be removed from the hive; and the second one, which is now 

 being capped, substituted in its place, and a third super placed ■ibuiv 

 it. When capping has commenced in the third super, the second, or 

 one next to the brood-body, will be finished, and may be removed ; the 

 third, or one over the second, substituted in place of the latter, and a 

 fourth placed above the third; and so on to the end of the season. 



The natural instinct of the bee is to store its food as near a.s iios- 

 sible to the brood. The apiarist should heed the teaching of Nmnre, 

 and keep food and brood in as compact a space as possible, aud not 

 violate the rule so unerringly pointed out by the Creator, by lifting 



the partly-filled super and placing beneath it one containing empty 

 sections, according to the orthodox teaching. By practicing the ortho- 

 dox method, much of the working force will be withdrawn fromlthe 

 upper super, and work will be distributed through that and the lower 

 one in undesirable and unprofitable proportion, ofttimes resulting in 

 none of the sections being properly filled. 



It will be noted that the advice is to give the additional super on 

 top at all times, and never allow more than two supers on at a time. 

 This view, apparently endorsed by the editor of Gleanings, is at. vari- 

 ance with the practice of many, probably of most, comb-honey'pro- 

 ducers who put the second super under the first, not waiting for'any 

 sealing in the first if there be a good flow, but adding supers under"aB 

 fast as all are crowded with bees, only putting empty supers on top 

 toward the close of the season. 



The plan advocated by Mr. Hershiser will undoubtedly secure sec- 

 tions thoroughly filled out, and more promptly sealed, but the begin- 

 ner should understand that it is not without objections. With an 

 empty super on top, the bees must be crowded harder to make a be- 

 ginning than when the empty super is under, and this harder crowd- 

 ing means just so much more inducement toward swarming. The 

 crowding also means more superfluous work in the way of brace- 

 combs and burr-combs, honey being stored between the two supers, 

 fins built on separators, etc. The honey being sealed in the lower 

 super, it will be more rapidly done, and rapid sealing tends toward 

 whiteness of comb ; but the very thing that tends toward whiteness 

 in that direction has the drawback that it tends toward darkness in 

 another direction. Bees have a trick of carrying bits of the old, IMack 

 brood-comb to help finish up the sealing of sections if the sections are 

 close enough to the brood-combs, so more of this objectionable work 

 will be done when the finishing is done in the lower than when it is 

 done in the upper super. 



It is a bad thing to give too much room ; it may be a worse thing 

 to give too little. A very weak colony may never need more than a 

 single super, there being plenty of room in that one super for all the 

 bees that can be spared from the brood-nest. It does not require a very 

 strong colony to fill two supers, there may be force enough to fill 

 three, four, or more supers. When a powerful colony has four or five 

 supers crowded with bees, the work going on at all points in all of the 

 supers would there not result a serious loss to confine those bees to 

 two supers? 



While not questioning that with never more than two supers on 

 at a time, the additional super always being added above, a greater 

 proportion, possibly a greater number, of fancy sections may be ob- 

 tained, there is room for serious question whether the total amount of 

 money received for the crop will be as great as by following a different 

 plan. 



Don't Use Old Bees for Rearing Queens. — After worker- 

 bees have attained the age of about Ki days, at this time of the year 

 they begin field-work, and although they may be forced to do house- 

 work, they are not so well fitted for it as when younger. So, when 

 getting queen-cells started, do not depend upon old bees. The sug- 

 gestion is likely to occur to the novice, "If I move a colony of bees 

 from its stand, putting in its place a hive containing one or two frames 

 of brood, the field-bees will naturally return to the old stand, and 

 finding no queen there they ought to proceed at once to rear one, and 

 that will be an easy way of making two colonies out of one." If there 

 were no other objection to the plan, a suflicient objection would be 

 that rearing queens is not in the line of business those field-bees have 

 been following, and the queens they rear will be more or less inferior. 



