•FMIE MMMRlCHNt WMM JO'lUMlTfRlL. 



508 



HIVES. 



Large or Small Hives -Bec§ 

 Unloading tiic Honey. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



the liivi; that they cannot take the 

 nectar fi-oni the field-bees as fast as 

 brought in. 



All of my observations go to prove 

 that when a colony is in a nornoal con- 

 dition, all the field-bees give their 

 loads of honey to the young, or nurse- 

 bees, and these deposit it in the cells 

 after it is ripened, partially or wholly, 

 unless the rush of honey is so great 

 that these young bees have to deposit 

 it in the cells before i-ipening, to keep 

 up with the supply which is coming in. 



When the bee comes in from the 

 field, it passes quickly about the hive 

 until it meets a young bee, when it 

 puts out its tongue to it, and if this 

 young bee has no load of honey, its 

 tongue is put out to meet the other, 

 when the load is passed from one to 

 the other. If this bee has,, a load, 

 another is sought until one is found 

 that can take it. That only young 

 bees are in the surplus department 

 during the busy portion of the day, 

 also points in the same direction. 



In making swarms, this getting of 

 the right proportion of young bees has 

 an Important bearing upon our success. 



Borodino, N. Y. 



On page 825, our good friend, Chas. 

 Dadant, labors under a wrong impres- 

 sion, in thinking that Doolittle does 

 not know how to manage large 

 frames. I think he does to a certain 

 extent, though not equally well with 

 the small ones. If Mr. Dadant would 

 be perfectly fair to his readers, he 

 would tell them in these hive-discus- 

 sions that he works for extracted 

 honey, and that his articles are written 

 from" an extracted-honey stand-point, 

 doing the same as plainly as I have 

 always told the readers, that small 

 hives and the contraction plans are to 

 be used only when working for comb 

 honey. 



While I am free to admit that what 

 Mr. Dadant says in his first sentence 

 in his article on page 325, relative to 

 my not having used large frames for 

 the production of comb honey, yet I 

 am equally certain that he is as ignor- 

 ant of the best hives and methods of 

 producing comb honey, as I am of the 

 other. When it comes to extracted 

 honey, we want large hives, every 

 time, as I have often said in the col- 

 umns of all the bee-papers ; but to 

 produce comb honey to the best ad- 

 vantage, no one, to my knowledge, 

 uses such a hive as Mr. D. recom- 

 mends ; therefore I do not see wherein 

 we disagree as badly as it is claimed, 

 when the reader understands the plane 

 of thought from which Mr. D. writes. 



On page 326 he tries to take the re- 

 port of a bee-convention as given by 

 an ordinary newspaper reporter, to 

 corner me with. If he had read my 

 reports in the bee-papers of this same 

 colony which gave the 566 pounds of 

 honey, as carefully as he did that con- 

 vention report, he would remember 

 that I said that this colony had brood 

 in 32 combs, to the amount of about 15 

 full frames. I gave it so at the con- 

 ^^vention, but the reporter made me say 

 (P32 combs filled with brood. 



Again, any reasonable person would 

 consider it" impossible to extract 566 

 pounds of honey out of 32 combs which 

 were kept full of brood all the time. 

 Now, this hive was woi-ked for ex- 

 tracted honey, to see what could be 

 done with a colony of bees under 

 favorable circumstances, and was set 

 apai't for this special purpose at the 

 beginning of the season. 



Another colony of about equal 

 strength was set apart for coml) honey, 

 and worked the same as I have ad- 

 vised working with a small hive and 

 the contraction system, and this colony 

 gave 30!) pounds of comb honey. Was 

 this a bad yield ? or did it " exist only 

 in imagination ?" In either case, it 

 was accomplished with a colony 

 worked in one of those small hives, and 

 the whole apiary worked on the same 

 plan, gave over 200 pounds on an 

 average from each colony that year. 



When I came to sell the 309 pounds 

 of comb honey, it brought 116.72 more 

 than did the 566 pounds of extracted, 

 and in this Mr. Dadant will find the 

 solution of his saying, " It seems to 

 me that such a good crop would have 

 increased, instead of lessened, my pref- 

 erence for the large hives." 



If I could dispose of exti-acted 

 honey at as paying figures as I can 

 comb honey, then I certainly would 

 work my apiai-y for extracted honey, 

 and would as certainly use large hives; 

 but when I must work for comb honey 

 to secure the greatest amount of pay 

 for the same amount of labor, then it 

 is that the small hives are the things 

 to use. 



I told the readers of what I pre- 

 ferred, from a comb-honey stand-point, 

 so as to give my mite to those who 

 wished to try my plans and benefit 

 them, as I have been benefited in the 

 past by the "mites" given by others 

 to help me along. I freely accord to 

 Mr. Dadant the same privilege, and 

 am glad that he gave us the article he 

 did, so I will not return his compli- 

 ments by saying that he does not 

 know what he is talking about, or that 

 what he says only exists in imagina- 

 tion. The field of bee-culture is broad 

 enough for all, and as I have said be- 

 fore in these columns, all are free to 

 use what I describe, or equally free to 

 let the same alone. 



SUPPLY DEALERS. 



Conimenls on the Subject of 

 Ordering Bee-Supplies. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 



BY MRS. B. J. LIVINGSTON. 



BEES WITH LOADS OF HONEY. 



In an argument relative to the 

 digested-nectar theory, I see it stated 

 that in harvest time the bees " go and 

 come, load and unload, as rapidly as 

 possible, and deposit their loads 

 directly into the cells." While I have 

 no comments to make on the rapidity 

 with which they go and come, load 

 and unload, yet I wish to say that I 

 believe the claim that they deposit 

 their loads directly into the cells, is a 

 mistaken one. 



I have watched the bees for hours 

 through the glass of a single-comb ob- 

 servatory hive, and I never yet saw a 

 bee, upon coming into the hive from 

 the field, deposit its load of honej' in a 

 cell. I do not say that they never do 

 so, for I think that there may be times 

 when there are so few young bees in 



The article on page 470 was not 

 written by my ■' supply dealer ;" such 

 an article would discourage a begin- 

 ner, who does not know what he or 

 she wants. The "Fikes" letter was a 

 model business letter, compared to the 

 first one I wrote to a supply dealer. I 

 suppose you could not imagine such 

 ignorance, but please remember that a 

 life spent on a frontier farm, raising 

 boys instead of bees, with scarcely ever 

 a ticket of leave from the farm, one 

 does not keep " booked up " with all 

 outside interests. So, when my boys 

 no longer needed all my time, the bee- 

 keeping fever began to burn. 



I had the catalogue of but one "sup- 

 ply dealer" at that time ; I wrote him 

 that I wished to begin bee-keeping in 

 a scientific way, on a capital of about 

 $10.00— that I knew nothing of it, had 

 no bee-literature, did not know a sec- 

 tion from a bottom-board, and I actu- 

 ally asked him to advise me as to the 

 best investment that I could make to 

 start me right. I told him that I had 

 three "swarms" of black bees in "boxes 

 and things." 



Now that letter would have thrown 

 Mr. "Supply Dealer's" clerk into 

 hysterics ; but the one I dealt with. 



