1908 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



417 



tween success and a mere pittance from our 

 bees when it comes to section honey. With 

 extracted honey the si;pers are generally till- 

 ed with comb, so the tirst nectar goes into 

 the supers, and the queen can spread herself 

 all she wishes, often doing this to the com- 

 plete exclusion of honey from the brood- 

 chamber, without any effort on the bee-keep- 

 er's part." 



"But what effort can the bee-keeper make 

 when working for comb honey? " 



'Just what you have been doing with 

 your new hives. Cut down the frames, 

 which reduces the size of the brood-chamber, 

 till the queen and bees, of their own accord, 

 have the hives literally tilled with brood 

 when the harvest commences. Or do what 

 I prefer — use a ten-frame Langstroth hive, 

 and in their connection use one, two, three, 

 or four division- boards, just in accord 

 with the prolilicness of the queen. At the 

 commencement of the honey harvest I take 

 away all the combs in the hives which are 

 not occupied with brood, and insert in their 

 places a division-board which is simply a 

 piece of an inch board of the size of a frame, 

 with a top- bar to a frame nailec^ to it, and 

 thus bring the brood in the hive to where I 

 wish it, whether the queen is very prolific or 

 otherwise." 



"Do you treat all of your colonies that 

 way?" 



"No. Half or more of the queens are so 

 prolific that there is no need of any division- 

 board; many more require only one board, 

 while a very few require more than two. 

 With the two this practically makes an eight- 

 frame L. hive, which hundreds of our best 

 bee keepers recommend. But 1 would far 

 rather have a colony go into the honey 

 harvest with only five combs filled with 

 brood and five division-boards than to have 

 the same colony with five frames with brood 

 and five frames with nearly all empty 

 combs." 



THE SWARMING PROBLEM. 



I have been requested to make clearer my 

 method of doubling up swarms as described 

 in the Oct. 15th issue of Gleanings. In 

 reading over this article I must confess that, 

 in endeavoring to be brief, I expected the 

 reader to take too much for granted. The 

 point in question was concerning the cluster- 

 ing of the swarm, "That it should be allow- 

 ed to cluster near the old stand," etc. While 

 the swarm is in the air I catch the clipped 

 queen, which is usually found near the hive 



energetically climbing all the weeds and 

 grass in the neighborhood. I then put her 

 into a Miller queen-cage. If there 's a branch 

 of a tree near the old stand I tie the cage to 

 that. Then I remove the old colony; and 

 the swarm, as it returns, will cluster around 

 the cage. The bees belonging to the old hive 

 will, as they return from the fields, cluster 

 with the swarm as if they had originally in- 

 tended to be a part of the game. 



I have tried several .modifications of this 

 plan. If no tree stands near by I place an 

 empty hive on the old stand and place the 

 cage containing the queen in this hive. The 

 bees will soon return, and at once go into 

 the hive. Then at night I dump the bees in 

 front of a hive that is not doing very good 

 work in the supers. If I have a young queen 

 in a nucleus (I usually have such during the 

 swarming season) I requeen the old colony 

 at once. If there is no young queen on 

 hand I give the old queen back to the old 

 colony till a young one can be raised. 



If my future experience with this method 

 works as well as it has during the past three 

 years 1 shall look for nothing better in the 

 way of handling new swarms. It is scarcely 

 any work. You have no increase. The old 

 ciilony will usually gather plenty of honey 

 to winter on. 



The united swarms will make extra fancy 

 honey on account of there being so many in 

 the hive; and where a strong swarm is put 

 with one not doing good super work, more 

 honey will be oblained than if there had been 

 no swarm, because the entire new swarm is 

 put to work in the supers. 



Another plan I have tried in a limited way 

 gave the best of satisfaction in handling 

 swarms when it was necessary for me to be 

 away from the yard. In other words the 

 conditions were the same as they would be 

 in an outyard. I look through the bees, 

 searching for cells by raising up the hive 

 and looking at the bottom of the frames. 

 When I found one that was preparing to 

 swarm I simply moved it to a new location 

 and gave the super it held to the hive on the 

 stand from which the old one was removed. 

 I keep two hives on the same stand. The 

 returning bees will go into the other hive 

 and work with the strange bees as well as 

 they did before. The result has been in 

 every case that the hive that wanted to 

 swarm gave up the idea at once and immedi- 

 ately tore down all cells. This has not given 

 quite as good results in comb honey as the 

 first method named, as you can not give this 

 force of bees to any weak colony you might 

 wish to. Then, again, I find that, as a rule, 

 more bees will go out with a swarm than 

 will naturally return to their old location 

 when their hive is moved. 



The plan I am going to try next season 

 will be to make a small tripod out of light 

 stuff and lay a light pole across it. The 

 cage containing the queen will be hung upon 

 the end of this pole, and the bees allowed to 

 cluster there. Then in the evening I will 

 take the bees on the end of the pole and 

 dump them as previously described. 



