240 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' EEVIEV^ 



production of surplus honey, perhaps, as 

 much as on any other one thing except, pos- 

 sibly, location. I am persuaded it is all a 

 matter of location, and length and time of 

 honey flow, that must ever decide this ques- 

 tion of whether a large or small brood cham- 

 ber hive will give the best results in surplus 

 honey. There can be no iron-clad rules laid 

 down in regard to this matter, but it should 

 be carefully considered and decided upon by 

 each bee-keeper for himself, and according 

 to his location, and time and duration of 

 honey flow, etc. Because a bee-keeper in 

 Colorado has splendid success in the produc- 

 tion of comb honey with a twelve or even 

 fourteen frame hive, it does not signify that I 

 should not have as good or even better suc- 

 cess in my location with an eight-frame hive 

 than with his large hive. 



I will try to explain why it is altogether a 

 matter of location. In the first place, every 

 bee-keeper in the North (especially in Cen- 

 tral Iowa, where I have kept bees for the 

 past twelve years) knows that the hardest 

 thing for us to do is to get our hives full of 

 bees and brood in time for the white clover 

 harvest, which usually begins about June 

 1st, after which basswood opens about July 

 Ist, and lasts from five to twenty days, ai 

 cording to the season, conditions of the 

 weather, etc., 21 days being the longest flow 

 I have ever known from basswood in Iowa ; 

 and as we do not have any surplus from fall 

 flowers, our harvest closes with basswood, 

 about July 10 or 15. Now, then, it is con- 

 ceded by our most scientific apiarists that a 

 bee does not become a field-worker until 

 about IG days old : and as it takes 21 days 

 from the egg to the bee, then 37 days must 

 elapse from the time the egg is deposited by 

 the queen until it becomes a field-worker ; 

 hence all eggs laid after 37 days prior to the 

 honey flow which yields your surplus be- 

 comes worse than useless, because they be- 

 come consumers instead of producers ; and 

 it has cost much honey and time of the work- 

 ers to raise them, which might otherwise 

 have been employed in gathering honey from 

 the fields. 



Now, then, 37 days prior to July 1st brings 

 us back to May 23rd ; hence it will be seen 

 that all eggs, in order to produce workers for 

 the basswood crop, which ends the surplus 

 for the year, must be deposited by the 23rd 

 of May. Now, then, brother bee-keepers of 

 Central Iowa, how may swarms would you 

 have in ItK) that would have eight frames, or 

 even six, full of brood by May 23rd ? After 

 an experience of 12 years in Iowa I will ven- 

 ture to say that, one year with another, you 

 would not have 25 hives out of 100 that would 

 have even six frames full of brood by the 

 1st of June. Some seasons it is so cold dur- 

 ing the fore part of May that it is impossi- 

 ble for the bees to care for so much brood at 

 that season. 



Now, in view of these facts how absurd it 

 would be to advocate a ten, twelve or fifteen 

 frame hive for such a location ! Why, any 

 practical honey i)roducer can see at once that 

 his surplus would go to fill up those empty 

 combs in that brood chamber, instead of go- 

 ing into the sections. As for me, I want a 



brood chamber for brood, and it must be of 

 a size that an average queen and colony of 

 bees can fill with bees and brood in time to 

 gather the white honey whenever it comes. 

 After years of careful study and experi- 

 menting along this line, with the above 

 named conditions to face with eight and ten 

 frame hives side by side, I have decided in 

 favor of the eight- frame every time, for 

 comb honey. This is for Central Iowa. On 

 the other hand, in a location where the hon- 

 ey flow does not come so early in the season, 

 aud continues all summer, an entirely dif- 

 ferent system would have to be practiced. 

 For instance, in the San Joaquin Valley, in 

 California, the surplus is gathered princi- 

 pally from alfalfa and fall weeds, and other 

 flowers; in fact, nearly every thing that 

 blooms yields honey to some extent : but 

 their swarming is all over long before the 

 harvest begins ; and the more swarms they 

 can get, the more honey they expect ; and 

 the parent colony has plenty of time to build 

 up and get ready for the harvest from alfalfa 

 which continues to yield during the entire 

 summer, and sometimes even to the first of 

 November. 



Now, in such a location as this it would be 

 foolishness to advocate an eight- frame hive, 

 for it is very important that the queen be 

 coaxed to lay her fullest capacity to produce 

 workers for such a continuous honey flow. 



No, brother bee-keepers, this subject of 

 large or small brood chamber hives can nev- 

 er be governed by any fixed rules, but must 

 ever be a matter of location, and time and 

 duration of the honey flow from which we 

 obtain our surplus. 



I will close by saying that I have no pet 

 theory to bolster up, and will use the hive 

 that gives me the best results in the poduc- 

 tion of honey, every time, if I can find it, 

 and I think I have found it at last ; and if 

 this escapes the waste-basket I will at some 

 future time tell the readers of this journal 

 the hive I like best of all, and why." 



A Condensed View of Current 



Bee Writings. 



E. E. HASTY. 



n7HE continued discussion of large and 

 l' small hives in Gleanimjs seems likely 

 to prove an eye-opener to us. We thought 

 we had all the ways in which a journal could 

 proceed, and we had not. The go-as-you- 

 please way of every writer chosing his own 

 subject, the question with symposium an- 

 swers, snappy and right to the point, aud 

 the special number devoted to a special top- 

 ic, all have been familiar to us this long 

 time. In use, however, the second and third 

 of these methods had got pretty well worn 

 out, and yet very few iiuestions in apiculture 

 could be regarded as settled. It was left for 

 Gleanimjs to take up a topic and stick to it, 



