l')08 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



639 



man could look after five or six apiaries, even 

 during the honey-flow, if all he had to do was to 

 put on supers when they were needed, while one 

 apiary would keep him busy if he had to extract 

 the honey to give the bees room. If the hives, or 

 some of them, become piled up too high, it is an 

 easy matter to remove some of the top supers by 

 the use of bee-escapes, and store the supers of 

 honey in the bee-cellar — there is no need to ex- 

 tract at the time of removal unless there is plenty 

 of time for doing the work. 



After the harvest is over, comes the work of 

 extracting; but there is no hurry about it; there 

 are probably two months in which to do the work. 

 The honey is all on the hives unless some of it 

 has been removed, as suggested, when that which 

 has been removed should beextracted first. That 

 which is on the hives is not only safe but daily 

 improving in quality. Without the invention 

 of the bee-escape this plan would not be feasible. 

 It is not practical to remove honey and brush off 

 the bees after the close of the harvest; but by the 

 proper use of the bee-escape the whole crop can 

 be taken off with no commotion, no stinging, no 

 robbing, and safely landed in the honey-house 

 without a bee in the yard fairly realizing what 

 has been taking place. 



The bee-escape is an important link in this 

 chain; but there is another oneequally important, 

 and that is, the use of artificial heat in warming 

 the honey so that it can be extracted when taken 

 off late in the season by the use of escapes. Hon- 

 ey left on the hive all the season becomes well 

 ripened and thick, and the cool weather makes it 

 still thicker and stiffer; and it would be difficult 

 to extract if the work were done immediately up- 

 on its removal. If taken off in large quantities 

 by the use of escapes it would be simply impos- 

 sible to extract it without warming it up. When 

 it is properly warmed up to the right degree it 

 can be extracted more readily, easier, and cleaner 

 than when taken right from the bees in hot 

 weather. As such honey is thoroughly ripened, 

 there is no necessity for any settling-tanks; the 

 honey can be run right from the strainer into the 

 cans or barrels. 



Perhaps this system of management might be 

 called the ge/itleman's system. It certainly is an 

 easy, pleasurable, leisurely way of producing 

 large quantities of first-class honey at a low cost. 

 There is no hurry, hurry, hurry to get the honey 

 extracted because the bees are needing more room; 

 and there is no shaking and brushing of angry 

 bees out in the boiling sun. 



ONE DRAWBACK TO THE PLAN. 



There is just one kind of locality where this 

 plan will not work out so satisfactorily, and that 

 is where the white-honey harvest is followed by 

 a dark flow. We have one apiary in such a lo- 

 cation — one where the flow from buckwheat is 

 likely to start in before that from the berries is 

 finished, and we have to watch it very closely and 

 hustle off the white honey the very day that the 

 bees show a tendency to begin work on the buck- 

 wheat. It does not take very much dark honey 

 to give some color to a whole lot of white honey. 

 Work it the best we can, there will always be 

 some berry honey not ready to extract, and we 

 are compelled to leave it on the hives to go in 

 with the buckwheat. A fall flow of honey, even 

 if dark, is considered a great advantage, and usu- 



ally it is, but I am not certain but I should pre- 

 fer a locality without the fall flow, simply because 

 it would allow me to put in practice my system 

 of management whereby I could take care of so 

 many more apiaries than with the management 

 that requires the removal of the white honey be- 

 fore the close of the harvest. 



Having gone briefly over the plan, and shown 

 that the principal features of the combination 

 are plenty of combs and supers, and the use of 

 bee-escapes and artificial heat in extracting, let's 

 go back to the beginning of the season and take 

 up the work, step by step, and give the more im- 

 portant details. 



SECURING WORKERS FOR THE HARVEST. 



When taken from the cellar, the stores of the 

 colonies are equalized and the hives protected by 

 being wrapped in tarred felt. No more attention 

 is required until it is warm enough to remove the 

 tarred felt. More equalization of stores may be 

 needed, or, if there is a general shortage, some 

 feeding; and it is almost certain that there must 

 be more or less equalization of brood before the 

 opening of the harvest. In a home apiary this 

 equalizing of the brood might not be necessary, 

 but in an out-apiary it goes a long way toward pre- 

 venting swarming too early, by some of the col- 

 onies, and helps to make all of the colonies ready 

 for the same treatment at the same time — a most 

 important factor in out-apiary management. 



When all of the hives are comfortably full of 

 bees, brood, and stores, upper stories of combs 

 are added, one on each colony strong enough to 

 need it. No queen-excluder is used at this time. 

 The queen is allowed full swing in both stories, 

 and this abundance of room at this time has a 

 great tendency to forestall the swarming fever. 

 Once the main harvest is on, and the bees at work 

 in two or three stories, the great danger of swarm- 

 ing is past. In an apiary of 150 colonies, man- 

 aged last year on this plan, only 7 cast swarms. 



When the upper story is nicely filled, or near- 

 ly filled, with bees, brood, and stores, and the 

 main harvest has fairly begun, a queen-excluder 

 is placed between the two stories. No time is 

 spent in hunting up the queens. We simply 

 wait four or five days, when freshly laid eggs dis- 

 close the presence of the queen. As a rule she 

 will be found in the upper story; if so, we simply 

 transpose the two stories, putting the upper one 

 below with the queen-excluder on top, and then 

 set on top what was formerly the lower story. 

 Usually, at this visit most of the colonies will be 

 ready for the third story. 



This plan gives the greatest opportunity for 

 the production of a lot of bees previous to the 

 harvest, then curtails the rearing of brood after 

 the harvest has opened, when the production of 

 brood is at the expense of the surplus. As the 

 bees hatch from the combs above the queen-ex- 

 cluder, the cells are at once filled with honey. 

 Many of the colonies will build queen-cells in 

 the supers above the queen-excluder. I have 

 taken pains to go through the supers and tear out 

 these cells, and I have paid no attention to them 

 and allowed the queens to go on and hatch, and 

 I could not see that any harm resulted from ei- 

 ther course — that is, there did not seem to be any 

 difference. 



As the season advances I keep on tiering up, 

 adding the empty supers at the bottom, next to 



