H)r. FIFTY YEARS A^IONG THE BEES 



an improvement to replace with a younger queen. 

 That reason may be that the workers of a queen are 

 unusually vicious, that they do not seal their honey 

 white enough, or there may be some other fault, but 

 generally it will be because they did not store honey 

 enough the previous year. When, then, the colony 

 of such a queen shows persistence in the matter of prep- 

 aration for swarming, she will be replaced by another as 

 part of the treatment of that colony. But old age alone 

 will not endanger her life. 



An item of some interest is the fact that when 

 I look through the colonies in the spring to clip any 

 qreen that may have whole wings, I find very little use 

 for the scissors if the previous season was very poor, 

 whereas after a big honey-yield I generally find a good 

 deal of clipping to do. In other words, there seems to 

 be more superseding at the close of a good than of a 

 poor year. Has it only happened to come so, or does a 

 good harvest wear out the queen faster? 



THE "jumbo" hive. 



At one time I had strong hopes that by the use of a 

 large hive with a large frame I might greatly diminish, 

 if not entirely suppress, swarming. Others reported 

 success with what was called the Jumbo hive. At Fig. 

 67 will be seen one of these hives. The frame is 2% 

 inches deeper than the regular Langstroth frame, and if 

 you will look at the front of the hive in the picture, you 

 will see that it is 2^/8 inches higher than the 8-frame 

 dovetailed hive by its side. The Jumbo has ten frames, 

 and the extra depth makes its equivalent to a 12-frame 

 Langstroth. 



I put bees in two of these hives in the home apiary, 

 and waited to see what would result the next summer 

 with much interest. The very first colony to send ort 

 a swarm was in one of these Jumbo hives ! I was 

 sorrv, but it didn't make me sick abed. I had be- 



