GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Conversations with Doolittle 



At Borodino, New York. 



HIVES AND DUMMIES FOK COMB HONEY. 



" I have a few colonies, mostly in boxes 

 of all sorts and sizes, and I wish to decide 

 on some liive for future use." 



" It is easier to decide on a hive for prac- 

 tical use in the production of comb honey 

 to-day than it was forty odd years ago 

 when I started in beekeeping. At that time 

 very many of the hives most pushed on the 

 beginner were much too complicated. They 

 had slides, drawers, arrangements for catch- 

 ing moths, etc. Then many of the hives 

 which were practical as to brood-nest and 

 surplus were so large as to be cumbersome. 

 The bulk and weight of any hive to be of 

 practical value should be as small as may 

 be. A hive that can not be handled easily 

 by one man when it contains a colony of 

 bees with fi''om twenty-five to forty pounds 

 of stores is, as a rule, to be shunned. 



" The hive must not be expensive. Forty 

 to fifty cents should purchase enough good 

 lumber for body, cover, and bottom-board. 

 There are few practical hives in use that do 

 not embody the Langstroth principle as to 

 frame construction. A simple box made 

 to hold ten Langstroth frames with a super 

 to match, suitable for holding the size of 

 sections decided upon, is, to my mind, as 

 good a hive as one costing three dollai*s. 



" As to painting such a hive, I leave that 

 matter to the desire of the individual. I 

 do not paint. Looks count nothing toward 

 a good yield of section honey. Dampness 

 in early spring, in the interior of any hive, 

 counts heavily against the maximum amount 

 of bees for the early nectar flow from 

 Avhite clover; and a painted hive subjects 

 its interior to a dampness that does not 

 exist in an unpainted one. As to the du- 

 'rability, if a well-covered shade-board is 

 used, as is necessary on any liive for the 

 best results in section honey, the unpainted 

 hive will last a lifetime. 



" Besides the ten frames for the hive, it 

 is well to make two or three dummies for 

 each. Take a log to the sawmill and have 

 inch-thick boards cut from -it of the same 

 width as the depth of your frame. Cut 

 these boards the same length as the frame, 

 and nail a top-bar to each. Li this way 

 one of these dummies can take the place of 

 any frame at any time and in any place you 

 may wish to use it. When the ilow of nec- 

 tar from Avhite clover begins, and any queen 

 does not keep the ten-frame comb-space 

 occupied Avith brood, pollen, and honey, 

 take out the unoccupied frames and insert 

 a dummy in place of each frame taken out. 

 This will throw the force of bees, and the 



surplus nectar obtained, into the sections 

 rig] J on the start, and practically insure a 

 good yield of section honey; while if the 

 bees commenced to store this first nectar 

 in the brood-chamber, little or notliing 

 might be the result at the end of the season. 



" Then there is another time these dum- 

 mies can be used to gWd advantage in any 

 locality like central New York, no matter 

 how good the queen may be. Where the 

 June and early July honey from white clo- 

 ver and basswood is nearly twice as valu- 

 able, pound for pound, as that gathered in 

 the fall, and where there is a period of 

 thirty-five to fifty days of entire dearth 

 between bassw^ood and fall flowers, this 

 matter is of first imjDortance. From past 

 exi^erience and observations I put the 

 amount of honey needed to produce one 

 pound of brood as two pounds; and as 

 after several weighings I find that a well- 

 filled L. frame contains two pounds of 

 brood, therefore it is evident that such a 

 frame of brood (7osts four pounds of honey. 

 Five such frames of brood are all that is 

 needed to keep any colony in good strength 

 for fall and winter; therefore, all over this 

 is an actual waste of our liighest-priced 

 honey where the eggs are laid after the bees 

 coming therefrom emerge too late to work 

 in the hai-A'est froim the white clover and 

 basswood. As the harvest from basswood 

 closes here about July 20, and as no eggs 

 can give bees of value in any harvest soon- 

 er than thirty days from the depositing of 

 the egg, it is easily seen that all eggs laid 

 later than June 20, beyond those necessary 

 for the successful existence of the colony, 

 can be of no value to us. Hence, where 

 the bees of their own accord do not restrict 

 brood-rearing down to about five full 

 frames, it is economy in white comb honey 

 to use these dummies to compel them to do 

 so. With black and hybrid bees these dum- 

 mies can be made to pay from $150 to $200 

 each year where used in an apiary of one 

 hundred colonies ; but with a good strain 

 of Italian bees (a strain which reduces 

 brbod-rearing as the flow of nectar increas- 

 es) the use of these dummies for the pur- 

 pose of repressing this out-of -season pro- 

 ductiveness is not so apparent. 



" As I have written in the past, the hive 

 and strain of bees capable of putting the 

 maximum number of bees on the stage of 

 action in time to take advantage of the 

 nectar floAvs, and as few at all other times 

 as are needed to carry on the colony to a 

 successful issue the next spring, are the 

 ones to adopt." 



