640 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15 



the brood-nest. I have often tiered them up three 

 supers high, and, in a few instances, four supers 

 high, with ten-frame Langstroth hives. At such 

 times I have longed for some sort of hive-lifter, 

 and I expect to try one this season. 



One object in adding the empty combs at the 

 bottom, and keeping the oldest, ripest honey at 

 the top, is that, if it should be desirable at any 

 time to remove any of the supers of honey, either 

 to extract the honey at once, or because the hive 

 was becoming piled too high, the oldest honey 

 would always be on top, where it could be re- 

 moved the most readily by the use of bee-escapes. 



To be continued. 



• ♦••••-»«-^* 



MANAGEMENT PREVIOUS TO THE 



HONEY-FLOW TO PREVENT 



SWARMS. 



Increasing the Amount of Brood Produc- 

 ed Just Before and During the 

 White-honey Flow. 



BY E. D. TOWNSEND. 



THE CHAPMAN PLAN. 



For preventing swarming and for increasing 

 the amount of brood produced previous to and 

 during the fore part of the white-honey flow, Mr. 

 S. D. Chapman, of Mancelona, Michigan, has a 

 system of his own. He uses eight-frame hives, 

 and the system is about as follows: At the ap- 

 proach of the warm period, which is usually near 

 May 20, in this locality, he shakes the bees from 

 two frames of brood, placing these two brood- 

 frames without the bees in an upper story, tak- 

 ing out two empty combs from the upper story 

 to replace those just removed from the lower 

 story. He now puts a queen-excluder on the 

 first story and the second story over it. This 

 gives the queen in the lower story two extra 

 combs to use for breeding purposes; and if there 

 is young brood in the two combs placed in the 

 upper story, this extra space in the two combs 

 amounts to considerable. In a week or two, two 

 more frames of brood are lifted up into another 

 or third upper story, making a three-story hive. 

 This method of lifting brood from the brood-nest 

 into upper stories is continued until it is desirable 

 to curtail brood production on account of the 

 bees not maturing in time to be honey-gatherers. 



During 1906 Mr. Chapman lifted brood ac- 

 cording to this plan in three-fourths of an out- 

 yard, when it turned cold and a strong northwest 

 wind came up. On the colonies in the remaining 

 fourth of the yard he put on the upper stories, but 

 placed in them no brood. Theselast colonies were 

 as good as the average of the yard. Shortly after 

 the beginning of the raspberry flow he found that 

 those colonies in the three-fourths of the yard, 

 where brood had been placed in the upper stories, 

 had from fifteen to twenty pounds of honey to 

 their credit, and this gain remained throughout 

 the season. 



By following this plan, whole yards of bees 

 have been worked for extracted honey through 

 the whole season, without a single swarm issuing. 

 It can be seen that powerful colonies need more 

 room during the period just before and during 

 the fore part of the white-honey flow than is pro- 

 vided in the ordinary hive in use to-day, and the 



above plan shows at least one method that may 

 be employed with regular hives to provide this 

 extra room at a time when it is necessary. Of 

 course, when this time is past, the hive is brought 

 back again to its normal size. 



In the fall of the year 1906, during the early 

 part of the buckwheat flow, our Pine Lake yard 

 of 100 colonies was left without upper stories 

 until the hives were crammed full of this early 

 buckwheat honey for winter stores. At this time 

 some of the most advanced colonies built comb 

 and stored honey on the outside of the hives, and 

 some of them must have had as much as 35 pounds 

 of honey in the hive when they went into winter 

 quarters. This was more honey than we were in 

 the habit of leaving, and was even more than a 

 ten-frame hive could hold and still leave room 

 for the colony to breed up in the spring. The 

 consequences were that, when the upper stories 

 were given in May, 1907, before the honey sea- 

 son opened, these bees in the Pine Lake yard car- 

 ried a few pounds of this buckwheat honey in 

 the brood-nest into the upper story to make room 

 for the queen below, with the result that, when 

 the honey was extracted, it was amber in color 

 and had to be sold for one cent a pound less than 

 the rest, which contained no dark honey. This 

 is the only case of the kind that has come to my 

 notice, and even this would not have happened 

 under normal circumstances. 



When I first began to produce extracted honey 

 the plan then in vogue was to lift a frame of brood 

 into the upper story to start the bees to work 

 there immediately. While this was successful so 

 far as getting the bees to work in the supers was 

 concerned, yet it was a noticeable fact that the 

 honey produced by this plan was never quite as 

 good in color as when no brood was lifted above. 

 I soon learned that it is not necessary to lift brood 

 above to get the bees to working in the supers, 

 drawn combs being found suflicient. Now, in 

 lifting this frame of brood into the upper story 

 there was always more or less honey from the 

 previous season lifted with it, which honey was 

 often gathered from buckwheat. This brought 

 about the same result as that outlined above, and 

 the off grade of honey being not to my liking the 

 system was abandoned. This is the worst feature 

 about the Chapman system, for the old honey 

 that is likely to be lifted up with the brood causes 

 all the honey to be of a somewhat darker color 

 and perhaps of a poorer quality. 



THE COVEYOU PLAN. 



Mr. E. E. Coveyou, of Petoskey, Michigan, 

 has a very good plan for handling his bees dur- 

 ing the fore part of the honey-flow. He uses 

 ten-frame hives, and before the honey-flow he 

 gives the colonies another story of combs with- 

 out putting an excluder between. The cells of 

 these combs should be of the worker size, for the 

 queen is allowed full sway through this story un- 

 til the colony needs a first one. At the time 

 this third story is given, the queen is placed be- 

 low in the first story, a queen-excluder is put on, 

 and then the third story of empty combs put over 

 it. Finally, on top of all, the second story part- 

 ly full of honey and brood is added. This plan 

 has the advantage of giving the colony an abun- 

 dance of comb room and also an unlimited 

 amount of breeding-space for the queen during 

 the critical swarming period previous to the hon- 



