September. 1914. 



American Hee Jonrnal 



C. F. Greenings Apiary 



they are good and strong, and 

 some honey coming in, take an empty 

 hive, fill it with frames of comb, if you 

 have them, or part combs and part 

 guide combs, all but one frame near 

 the middle of the hive. Now go to the 

 best colony you have, and select one 

 good frame of brood in several stages, 

 and put it in the space left in the new 

 hive, putting an empty frame where 

 you removed the brood from. 



Now take the hive with the frame of 

 brood to a good strong colony, pick 

 up the colony and carry it away to one 

 side at least 1<> feet, and put the hive 

 with frames and comb of brood in the 

 place where the colony stood. Con- 

 tract the entrance to a couple of inches 

 and let them alone. 



This work must be done when a 

 good number of bees are out in the 

 fields; near the middle of the day is 

 best. In a few minutes you have a 

 thousand bees flying around, and they 

 are completely lost. They will run in 

 and out crai^y for a while, but soon get 

 to work with a resolution that, "As we 

 have lost our home and mother we have 

 the wherewith to make a new home 

 and brood to rear a new mother." By 

 the end of the second day they will be 

 working like nailers to build up, while 

 the hive you carried away is as still as 

 a graveyard on a Sunday night. Prac- 

 tically all the field workers are at the 

 old stand in the new hive. Now treat 

 them the same as the first part of this 

 article directs, and you have no swarms 

 that year. 



By following this plan you have one 

 swarm each of increase, or none, as 

 you elect, not as the bees would do if 

 left alone. Follow the above and save 

 colonies, save watching them, save 

 doubling weak ones, save hives, and 

 what is more important when the honey 

 flow comes in all its beauty, you have 

 every field worker at work. They are 

 not crazy over the swarming fever or 

 losing time strung up waiting for a 



good day, or building combs when 

 they should be lugging in honey, while 

 honey lasts. 



Thus we have the bees all busy while 

 honey comes, whereas if allowed to 

 swarm in the middle of the honey flow, 

 see what a loss you have caused by the 

 demoralization of one two, three, or 

 four swarms from one, and half of 

 them won't get more than enough to 

 winter on. 



My colonies were eight stories high 

 last summer; and while my neighbors 

 got 2.5 to .50 pounds of honey, I ran up 

 to 1.50, 200, and one colony 235 pounds. 

 You see it is honey I was after. 



Sequel: Build up strong before the 

 honey flow, get the swarming out of 

 the way, and let every able bodied bee 

 tote in honey. 



By my method you can build up any 

 kind of swarm you wish or any strain 

 of bees, because you select the brood 

 to rear the queen from. They more 

 readily sober down by taking a frame 

 of brood from the hive you remove 

 and place it in the new hive, because it 

 is a part of the old home and smells 

 the same. They will never desert their 

 brood. 



Grand Meadow, Minn. 



Bee Culture in German Switz- 

 erland 



BY II. SPUHLER. 



THE culture of bees in German 

 Switzerland differs very much 

 from that in America. Instead of 

 open air apiaries, we have house api- 

 aries in which the hives are placed side 

 by side and tiered in two or three rows. 

 The apiaries are spacious buildings 

 containing from 10 to 100 hives, and 

 they often look very pretty from the 

 outside. They are well aerated and 

 lighted, and allow the bees to escape 

 from the inside rooms without allow- 



ing tliem to come in. They are usually 

 placed near the house of their owner, 

 or in a garden or in an orchard. It is, 

 therefore, easy to watch them, to notice 

 their flight, to discover the beginning 

 of robbing or of swarming, etc. They 

 are sometimes built large enough to 

 allow the establishment of a work shop 

 in which the apiarist can work, prepare 

 his frames with foundation, e.xtract the 

 honey, and melt the sugar for feeding 

 in fall or spring. It serves as storing 

 room for empty combs, extractor, feed- 

 ers, etc. 



In such a house apiary one can work 

 in all sorts of weather, whether cold, 

 warm or rainy. This is important in a 

 country where the weather is so vari- 

 able, and where we usually have over 

 150 rainy days in the year. 



The hives are not opened from above, 

 but from the r :ar through a door. 

 They offer sufficient space for a row of 

 brood combs and two rows of super 

 combs above, the latter measuring 

 each one-half the dimension of the 

 brood-combs. Behind the combs of 

 each row is a movable window sash of 

 proper size held in place bv a wooden 

 wedge. 



The frames are usually placed cross- 

 wise to the entrance in the Swiss hive, 

 and for that reason examinations re- 

 quire much time and labor; for in- 

 stance, in the latter part of May, when 

 a colony is supplied with all its combs, 

 13 in number, if we wish to examine 

 the center one, we must remove the 

 first six and place them in another 

 hive or a box, which is used for this 

 purpose. Those who follow this sys- 

 tem do not seem to appreciate the 

 proverb, "Time is money." 



This defect was recognized long ago, 

 and there are now a number of hives 

 made which are as movable as the 

 American hives, such as the leaf hive 

 of Ihirrnli (?), adapted to the Dadant 

 hive, and my own hive, corresponding 

 to the "Schweizerstock." In those 

 hives, the frames are placed endwise to 

 the entrance, so that when the rear 

 sash is removed each frame is accessi- 

 ble from the rear. This arrangement 

 perm its numerous observations through 

 the windows,such asnoting the growth 

 of the colony, its supply of honey, its 

 building of combs, queenlessness by 

 the restlessness resulting from it, suc- 

 cess or failure in introduction of 

 queens, etc. The handling of these 

 hives is so simple that it permits to ex- 

 amine two or three of them, while only 

 one of the Swiss hives could be ex- 

 amined. 



The house apiary is also indispensa- 

 ble here because of the lack of room, 

 as many people possess only a very 

 small garden. But it is usually suffi- 

 cient in size to permit of a building 

 containing 10 to 30 hives, and the bee 

 lover can have an agreeable and in- 

 structive recreation, with an addition 

 to his resources. That is why we have 

 so large a number of apiarists owning 

 only a few colonies. The Canton of 

 Zurich, with only tJG(J square miles of 

 area, possesses 21,000 colonies of bees, 

 owned by 1600 beekeepers, or about 30 

 colonies to the square mile, and IG 

 colonies per beekeeper. Very few men 

 possess 100 colonies, and I know but 

 one with 200 to 300 hives, earning his 

 living with bee culture. In his case, 



