1909 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



737 



THE PAULOWNIA-TREE THAT WOULD HAVE ITS 

 OWN WAY. 



my favorite trees. Even if it does die down 

 to the ground every winter, it is worth all it 

 costs to see it come up and "climb" when 

 warm weather comes. Of course, it needs 

 good soil. The building right back of the 

 tree is at the present time my auto-house. 

 It was formerly one of my cold-frame green- 

 houses, and as a consequence the soil is very 

 rich where you see the tremendous growth 

 of plants and foliage. 



MANAGEMENT OF LARGE APIARIES IN 

 CUBA. 



How Conditions there Differ from those 

 in the United States 



BY FRANK REIMAN. 



Fifteen hundred colonies of bees distribut- 

 ed among four or five apiaries are about all 

 that one man can manage with the help ob- 

 tainable in Cuba. The honey-flow in this 

 immediate vicinity is over by the last week 

 in December, and at this time it is necessary 

 to leave enough honey in the lower story to 

 last the bees until the 1st or 15th of March, 

 when a new honey-flow begins. During 

 this interval there is very little to do except 

 to melt up combs from the occasional queen- 

 less colonies or colonies containing drone- 

 layers. 



At the last extracting I remove all the su- 



gers, as the hives contain but few bees and 

 rood. All the old combs are melted up, 

 and the brood-chamber filled with new 

 combs. About March 1 I begin to put on 



supers again, using as many drawn combs 

 as I can spare for each super, but never 

 more than five such combs m a nine-frame 

 super, as every alternating frame should be 

 empty. One reason for this is that the 

 queen is kept in the lower story until the 

 brood-combs are filled with brood; and 

 another reason is that the bees will then 

 fill the empty frames with combs. If the 

 new comb built is drone I cut it out for wax; 

 but if of the worker size I use it for the new 

 swarms. In this connection I will say that I 

 never use comb foundation, as the honey 

 never comes in with a rush here, and the 

 bees usually only gnaw away the founda- 

 tion. After the first of March I look through 

 every colony once a week. 



My frames are 21 inches long, 6 inches 

 deep. Thej^ are made of ^-inch material 

 cut into 'i-inch strips. These narrow top- 

 bars enable me to look between the combs 

 without lifting them out and thus save much 

 time. 



March, April, May, and June are the main 

 swarming months; but there are liable to be 

 swarms any month except during December, 

 January, and February. I make artificial 

 swarms when practicable. My plan for this 

 is very simple. After the queen fills the 

 brood-chamber with brood, and has about 

 four of the combs in the super filled, I take 

 these upper combs out and place them in an 

 empty hive, alternating them with empty 

 frames. I do not look for the queen, as this 

 takes time. I put the old hive in another 

 place, and in a week I fill the new hive with 

 combs and brood, and do not otherwise dis- 

 turb it until I put on supers. In this way I 

 lose only about ten per cent of the colonies on 

 account of queenlessness. (If I should add 

 the combs of brood after the young queen 

 is hatched, the bees would almost surely kill 

 her, even though she had been laying for a 

 week.) In a week after the old hive has 

 been moved, the bees will be working in the 

 super, and in less than a month the colony 

 will be strong enough to repeat the same 

 process, or the extra combs can be used to 

 hatch in some other hives. 



In March, April, and May we extract about 

 every ten days; we usually have five help- 

 ers, and extract about four barrels a day. 

 At every extracting we cut out all the drone 

 combs or old combs, and replace them with 

 empty frames, alternating with the combs 

 between. We melt up these undesirable 

 combs for wax. 



The spring honey-flow lasts until June 1, 

 and then there are hard times for the bee- 

 keeper until Oct. 1. Last year I fed seven 

 ;W0- pound sacks of sugar; but this year I fed 

 ten sacks, because the season was a month 

 later, on account of heavy rains. We have 

 had as much as 6 inches of rainfall in 2;^ 

 hours; 10 inches in three days, and 25 inch- 

 es in a month. I believe the average rain- 

 fall in the United States is only 27 inches for 

 a year. The rain always falls in the after- 

 noon; and after one inch falls, the bees usu- 

 ally do not work until eight or nine o'clock 

 the next mornmg. 



