1896. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



709 



Surplus-Honey Room Above Brood-Chamber. 



BY CHAS. DADANT & SON. 



We have received the following letter, requesting a reply 

 thereto in the American Bee Journal : 



Messrs. Chas. Dadant & Son :— Pardon me for calling 

 on your generosity to answer a question concerning a state- 

 ment you made a short time ago in the American Bee Journal, 

 when you said your only objection to the American style of 

 frame (12x13 inches) was that it gave lesssurplus room above 

 the brood-chamber than the other kinds. Now, what I wish 

 to ask is, why do you want so much surface at the top of the 

 brood-chamber ? Why not have the brood-chamber and sur- 

 plus apartments each in a compact form, a la Boardman, for 

 the production of extracted honey ? 



Methinks your reason is that in order to get the same 

 capacity your hives would be too tall, and the bees would have 

 just so much further to carry their load of sweets before de- 

 positing it. But could not this be remedied by having an en- 

 trance in the super as well as in the brood-chamber ? Or is it 

 because you are afraid of those hives toppling over? But 

 could not that also be remedied by having the hives of such a 

 dimension that two stories high would be sufficient? 



But, say, I am getting away from my subject. What I 

 really want to know is, why is it better to have the brood 

 spread out in order to give more surplus surface, than it is to 

 have both in a compact form ? As it seems to me, the latter 

 would be preferable. E. B. Tyrrei.i,. 



Davison, Mich., Oct. <i. 



We think Mr. Tyrrell slightly misunderstands our posi- 

 tion. We do not consider the American hive as making the 

 brood more compact, for the same quantity of it has to be 

 spread over more frames in this hive than in the Quinby, since 

 the 12xlo frame contains only 156 square Inches, while the 

 Quinby, 11x18, contains 19S inches. The only difference is 

 that the Quinby is flatter, or more shallow, and the brood-nest 

 has to be slightly elongated horizontally, but the same number 

 of bees may be reared in a less number of frames, while the 

 regular Langstroth frame produces less bees in the same num- 

 ber of frames when compared to the American hive, since it 

 contains a less number of cells. Our objection to the American 

 hive is that in order to have the same surplus room above, we 

 have to make a hive containing 16 frames, and this causes 

 too much surplus to be placed in the brood-combs. For ex- 

 tracting, this objection is not insuperable. That is the reason 

 why we have kept our Arnerican hives in use, of which we 

 have had some 65 for 20 or 25 years. 



The storifyicg of a large number of cases on a tall, nar- 

 row hive is objectionable, for the reasons mentioned by Mr. 

 Tyrrell. It is so, at least with us, for we have tried it and do 

 not like it. 



We have also tried the entrance in the super, and object 

 to that, for two reasons. The bees become accustomed to that 

 entrance and are very much annoyed when it is closed up for 

 winter ; and the other reason is, that the bees do not place 

 any honey in that part of the super which is close to that 

 upper entrance, following in this matter that instinct which 

 warns them against robbers. It is owing to this instinct that 

 they always store their honey above or behind the brood-nest. 

 The process of inverting, which caused such a craze a few 

 years ago, took advantage of this instinct of the bees to com- 

 pel them to move their stores into the supers. The brood- 

 chamber being inverted, the bees found their honey below 

 their brood and next to the entrance. They hastened to move 

 it, but as the brood then occupied the top of the brood-nest, 

 they were compelled to store the honey in the supers. This 

 practically took from the bees all their honey. 



We have tried upper entrances during very hot seasons, 

 when It seemed Impossible to give the bees sufficient ventila- 

 tion from below. In every instance where the upper entrance 

 was left for a short length of time after the end of the crop, 

 we found a large amount of dry combs near this upper en- 



trance, both above and below it. This has caused us to dis- 

 card the practice altogether. 



In all these arguments on hives, we do not wish to lay 

 down any particular rule for all to follow. We simply give 

 our experience and our explanation of the facts that we have 

 noticed. Climatic conditions undoubtedly change the com- 

 parative condition of the bees, and what proves true with us 

 may not turn out the same in another climate; but what we 

 report here is the deduction taken from the facts noticed in a 

 life experience with bees, in different styles of hives. 



Uamilton, III. 



starting iu Bee-Keepiug— Various Points. 



BY DR. E. GALLUP. 



For a " beginner " in bee-keeping, I wish to tell my friends 

 that I have Langstroth Revised, Root's A B C of Bee-Culture, 

 Newman's Bees and Honey, Doolittle's Queen-Rearing, Alley's 

 Thirty Years Among the Bees, Heddon's Success in Bee-Cult- 

 ure, Dr. Tinker's Bee-Keeping for Profit, and Hutchinson's 

 Advanced Bee-Culture ; and I have also read the American 

 Bee Journal and Gleanings in Bee-Culture. So you can readily 

 see that I was not quite so green in the business as many 

 might suppose. 



There is one man here that claims that he has beat me. 

 He started in last spring with one colony, and now has 35. 

 But he took his from houses and buildings. I presume that if 

 I had the time I could have had over 100 colonies now, for 

 there has been quite a number of people after me to take them 

 away, and some are even willing to pay for removing them, so 

 any one can see that it is a very easy matter to start an api- 

 ary here. Or if one wishes, he can gather up a large apiary 

 of wild bees from caves and rocks on Catalina Island — where 

 a certain party was going to start a queen-rearing establish- 

 ment, isolated from all the rest of the world. It was a grand 

 idea, but it never materialized. Any one starting an apiary 

 in the Island could work up quite a home market for honey, 

 for it is a great resort for health, pleasure seekers, fishing, 

 etc. — probably one of the finest in the known world. At least 

 so it is said by those who ought to know. 



We have no winter problem to solve here in the valley ; 

 even a small nucleus can be wintered as readily as a large col- 

 ony, and one flow of orange-blossom honey is almost, if not 

 quite, equal to the Eastern basswood flow. I made a test last 

 spring with my one colony, believing that the reason why so 

 little of it was stored, was that we did not have the working 

 force on hand at the right time. The orange trees are in 

 bloom over two months, taking the early and late varieties 

 into account, and the flow of nectar was so profuse that in 

 cultivating among the trees with a team, the horses' hair and 

 harness would be glazed over with nectar, and one could 

 scent the smell of nectar for a long distance. So one can 

 scent alfalfa when in bloom, and it is wonderful how the bees 

 do hum on both the orange and alfalfa. 



Well, I am off the track a trifle. 



The last of January I bored a %-inoh hole in the cover of 

 the hive, and fitted in a plug. Every evening I would pour in 

 three or four table-spoonfuls of quite thin diluted sweet. The 

 bees had plenty of honey in the hive, so it only took a little 

 stimulating to set the queen to breeding, and by the first of 

 March, when the oranges are in profuse bloom, I had a strong 

 working force, but did not get the time to attend to them as I 

 ought, as they filled six combs in the super before I was aware 

 of it, so we had some nice, white comb honey for table use, 

 and it satisfied me of the fact that I started in to demonstrate. 



Right here I will say that for stimulating I prefer to pour 

 the feed right on the bees. If the feed is of the right consis- 

 tency, it never injures them at all. It takes but very little 

 feed to stimulate to start breeding, and keep it up, providing 

 we have abundance of honey in the hive for the bees to draw 

 from. It would be poor policy to stimulate to rear a lot of 

 bees and then allow them to starve. No danger of starving as 

 soon as they can gather nectar from outside forage. 



Bees can gather pollen here at all seasons of the year. 

 Loquats or Japanese plums blossom in November and Decem- 

 ber, and the eucalyptus nearly all winter. 



I hear of one person that has an apiary in the mountains 

 letting his bees starve to death now; and others say their 

 bees have stores enough, by equalizing, to last them through. 

 Mr. Oderlin has extracted three tons, and says his bees are in 

 good condition. His bees had access to 40 acres of Lima 

 beans. My bees are yet gathering more than they consume. 

 I have no extractor yet, and I find many of my colonies have 

 restricted their queen down to pretty close quarters, after all 

 my drawing out so many combs to build up increase ; yet. 



