454 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



July 16, 1903. 



whyj some of these forced, or, for that matter, natural 

 swarms will stay in their new hive and go to work at once 

 with apparently no thought of swarming out, and others, 

 just alike in every way so far as can be seen, and treated in 

 exactly the same manner, are determined to swarm out and 

 loaf awhile before going to work. With some, leaving one 

 frame of brood a day or so prevents swarming out, but here 

 so little reliance can be placed on this that I do not practice 

 it any more, unless for some reason a colony is " swarmed " 

 before they have begun to construct cells. In this case I 

 leave them permanently one or two frames of brood, and if 

 a colony has not got the swarming fever, they seldom at- 

 tempt to swarm after nearly all their brood is taken away. 



I have done a good deal of experimenting in making 

 these forced swarms, trying to find some method or plan by 

 which they could be made that would prevent their swarm- 

 ing out, and while I have not succeeded in this I will give 

 the plan I now practice, which gives the best results of any 

 of the many methods I have tried. 



The colony that is to be swarmed is set or moved just 

 back of its old stand, and a new hive, the frames of which 

 contain only starters, is set in the place. Underneath this 

 new hive is placed an empty hive-body without frames, 

 and another without frames is placed over it. If I have 

 made my meaning clear, it will be seen that we have three 

 hive- bodies or stories tiered up, the middle one only contain- 

 ing frames. I now take the frames with adhering bees 

 from the old hive and shake or jar them into the empty top 

 story, when they at once run down into the two lower 

 stories. No brushing is required, for if desired nearly every 

 bee can be jarred from the frames. With the left hand I 

 hold the frame by the top-bar over the empty hive.and then 

 with the closed right hand, I hit the top-bar near the center 

 a sharp, quick blow. After a little practice one can, with 

 two or three blows or strikes, jar nearly every bee from a 

 frame. 



After the bees are jarred in, the upper story is removed, 

 and if the old hive had on unfinished sections these are 

 placed on the new hive ; or, if they are to be run for ex- 

 tracted honey, a set of extracting combs with a queen-ex- 

 cluding honey-board between the two stories is used. The 

 second or third day the empty under body is removed. The 

 object in having it there is that I have found that for some 

 reason when it is used the bees are much less liable to 

 desert or swarm out the next day or two, and they are also 

 not nearly so apt to loaf or sulk for a few days. When only 

 one story is allowed at first a good many of the bees, espe- 

 cially if the weather is very warm, will come out and 

 cluster on or under the hive, and in some cases loaf there 

 for a week or more. Here, if there are no unfinished sec- 

 tions to place over the new or made swarm, the conditions 

 are very seldom such that sections with either starters or 

 full sheets should be given a new colony until they have 

 considerable comb built in the brood-chamber ; for at all 

 times when honey is coming in, excepting some heavy bass- 

 wood flows, so much pollen is also being gathered that 

 enough of it would be stored in many of the sections to 

 spoil their sale. 



In this locality, one, if not the most, important matter 

 in regard to artificial swarming is the disposal and man- 

 agement of the removed brood. The white honey-flow here 

 usually commences the forepart of June and lasts until the 

 latter part of July. This gives a flow of from 40 to 60 days 

 in length, and a swarm, either natural or forced, that is not 

 re-inforced by the young bees from hatching brood greatly 

 decreases in its field-force long before the flow is over. 

 While, of course, many of these field-bees are old and about 

 used up at the time the swarm issues, or is made as soon as 

 there is considerable brood in the new hive, it takes a large 

 number of bees for hive or house work that would be free 

 for the field if the new colony is re-inforced by young bees 

 from the old hive. Southern Minnesota. 



Inner Life of the Hive— Spring Feeding. 



BV ARTHUR C. MILI,KK. 



IF I may judge by Mr. Dadant's article in the "Journal " 

 for May 28, he took my remarks of April 30 as a personal 

 attack. I much regret his doing so, for I hold him in 

 high esteem both for his scholarly attainments and for his 

 accomplishments in bee-keeping. Also, I have often profited 

 by his writings. 



In his reply to the article cited he has apparently assumed 

 that my knowledge of the internal life of the hive is but 

 superficial, and that also my opinions on the value of spring 



feeding are based on theory rather than on practice. Be- 

 fore taking up this latter point I want to discuss some 

 things concerning the inner life of the bee-colony. 



If it is not too egotistical perhaps I may be permitted 

 to intimate that possibly I am ahead of Mr. Dadant on some 

 of the habits of the bee as he considers he is ahead of me 

 in practical bee-keeping. When I asserted that bees never 

 hold out their tongues and offer food to the queen, I meant 

 just exactly that. Food is never given on or by the tongue, 

 all previous assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. 

 Also, so far as I can as yet tell, nectar-gatherers nevei turn 

 their loads over to the young bees, but young bees do some- 

 times supply the field-workers with chyle. 



Regarding "deference:" The term " king-bee " and 

 "queen-bee" were given because where the queen went 

 there went the bees also, as Mr. Dadant will readily see by 

 a perusal of ancient works. True "deference "had noth- 

 ing to do with it except as it existed in the imagination of 

 the writers. 



Bees backing out of a queen's way is more apparent 

 than real. They will just as readily move aside for any 

 other bee moving as deliberately forward. Also, there are, 

 1 believe, physiological grounds for the bees backing or 

 moving away to avoid the queen. 



If Mr. Dadant thinks he has seen food offered on the 

 tongue and deference shown, etc., I beg him to look again. 



I have quite as much respect for the " old masters " as 

 has Mr. Dadant, but they are as far from being infallible as 

 we are. 



Dr. Gallup told of an " umbilical cord," and Mr. Doo- 

 little forthwith discovered it " ramifying all through the 

 royal jelly " of his queen- cells (although Dr. G. said it did 

 not so ramify). Both posed as leading lights, but both were 

 wrong. Not very reliable " old masters " to tie to. A little 

 study of Cowan's "Honey-Bee" would have shown what 

 the supposed cord really was, i. e., the last cast of the larva 

 with its silken attachments. 



Regarding feeding : I said that I found stimulative 

 feeding in the spring was always done at a loss, and Mr. 

 Dadant has quite unwittingly sustained me in it, as I will 

 presently show. 



Mr. Dadant cites a colony which doubled its size in 

 30 days on account of a " one bee at a time " food-supply. A 

 little arithmetic should convince him that some more potent 

 cause must have been behind that increase, for if when the 

 "feeding" began the colony was of a size represented by 

 " two " (2), and as it takes a bee 21 days to mature from the 

 egg, but nine days of that feeding can be counted as having 

 contributed to the increase of bees visible at the end of the 

 30 days. This is a problem which will interest Mr. Hasty. 



Now I will quote from Mr. Dadant, and let him prove 

 my case for me : 



" The present season is a very good one to show the ad- 

 vantages of stimulative feeding in the spring, and when I 

 had read Mr. Miller's letter in the evening, we had just 

 been feeding some 60 colonies. I say that the present sea- 

 son is a good one for feeding, because it is a very irregular 

 one. [I would contend that it was just the one to avoid it. 

 — A. C. M.] In a season when the winter is long-pro- 

 tracted, and the bees are confined to the hive until late, 

 and in which the crop, once begun, it continues uninter- 

 rupted, feeding will do harm if begun too soon, and will do 

 no good after the bees have commenced harvesting honey. 

 But when the colonies have been breeding as they have this 

 season, a little early, and a change in the weather is caus- 

 ing them to stop, a little judicious feeding stirs them and 

 causes them to continue breeding. 1/ 2i'e fed colonies that 

 were heavy zvith honey, zve would make a mistake. [My 

 italics. — A. C. M.] If we fed when the days were so un- 

 pleasant that the bees that went out foraging would die of 

 cold we would do the bees damage. [In other words, we 

 must do intermittent feeding, and yet, in the slowly fed 

 colony above cited, he attributed its gain to the slow, steady 

 supply of food. — A. C. M.] But the colonies which discon- 

 tinue their breeding because of a change in the weather 

 when the weather is so they can still fly, but find nothing, 

 will be benefited by stimulative feeding." — Page 344, May 

 28, 1903, American Bee Journal. 



As I interpret the foregoing quotation it amounts to 

 this: 



When a change of weather checks brood-rearing we 

 should feed to start it, but we should not feed when the 

 weather is against safe flight. Ergo, when the weather is 

 good, breeding goes on unhindered, and when it is foul we 

 must not feed lest it induces fatal flight. 



To quote again from Mr. Dadant, where he refers to a 



