GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



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Pia. 3. — ^Enough bees to pay for the 2^4 -mile run. 



wrapped around the bees. The swarm, Fig. 

 1. extended for three feet along the limb. 



A tinner made the smoker on top of the 

 box, from heavy copper. The bellows was 

 from a Clark cold-blast smoker. 



In Fig. 2 is one of my glass and tin com- 

 bination covers. I pulled a string to take 

 the picture. 



BEES POISONED BY A BLACK SPIDER. 



I was at one of my hives this morning, 

 and saw a black spider killing bees. He 

 ran toward the entrance, and two bees 

 pounced on him. He held them off the 

 length of his legs, and they died inside of a 

 minute without liis even biting them; then 

 he dragged them back to a pile of dead 

 ones which he had killed — forty or fifty of 

 them, and seemed to be sucking the honey 

 from under their throats. Others flew to- 

 ward him and merely touched him a little, 

 and they seemed to be stupefied. He must 

 have ejected poison toward 'them, such as 

 I have smelled when a sjDider has been near 

 my nose. The bees would cease to struggle 

 in a very short time, and could not get their 

 sting near the spider as I expected them to 

 do. 



Marshall, Mich., June 13. 



bees steadily from the time I got them, 

 which was the 3d or 4th of May, 1911; and 

 as the colony became very strong I decided 

 to divide it. I divided them according to 

 the Alexander method, and this was the 

 lower hive. When they swarmed, which was 

 three or four days after I had separated 

 them, they had drawn out only five of the 

 frames from the foundation. They had 

 plenty of room, and the weather was not 

 unusually hot. I had given them a select 

 queen; and, not ha\ang another hive at the 

 time, I cut out the queen-cells they had 

 built ; and the queen being clipped, and 

 not being able to get away, the swarm re- 

 turned of its own accord. Notice that 1 

 had raised the super as shown in the pic- 

 ture, as I thought it might afford ventila- 

 tion if the bees thought it was too hot in 

 the hive. 

 New York. 



FORMING NUCLEI TO PREVENT SWARMING 



BY R. M. SPENCER 



ALEXANDER PLAN FOR MAKING INCREASE 

 CARRIED OUT TOO LATE 



BY M. J. KAUFMAN 



About a month before the time this pic- 

 ture was taken I started with an eight- 

 frame colony and a select queen. I fed the 



When the swarming season begins in 

 March we go over all the hives once every 

 eight days, cutting out all cells, making 

 nuclei, or, where colonies have good stock 

 and cells, we often make straight division. 

 When we are able to get the young queens 

 we take frames of bees containing about 

 three times as many bees as we want, and 

 shake them in front of the small nuclei on 

 the ground, allowing them to run in and to 

 cluster on the several frames of brood pre- 



