630 



T'KS MMBRICMK mWiM J@>^MIfM£r. 



■■'— ^■^■'■^' 



Xbe Sons of tlie Bee. 



Buzz, buzz, buzz ! 



This is the soug of the bee. 

 Her legs are of yellow. 

 And voice is quite mellow. 



And yet a good worker is she. 



In days that are sunny 

 She's getting her honey ; 

 In days that are cloudy 



She's boarding her wax ; 

 On buckwheat and lilies, 

 And gay daffodillies, 

 And columbine blossoms, 



She levies a tax. 



Buzz, buzz, buzz ! 

 The sweet smelling clover 

 She humming hangs over ; 

 The scent of the roses 



Makes fragrant her wings ; 

 She never gets lazy ; 

 From thistle and daisy. 

 And weeds of the meadow. 



Some treasure she brings. 



Buzz, buzz, buzz ! 

 Front morning's first gray light 

 Till fading of daylight. 

 She's singing and toiling 



The summer day through. 

 Oh ! we may get weary. 

 And think work is dreary, 

 But 'tis harder by far 

 To have nothing to do.— Selected. 



HIVES. 



l.arge or Small Hive«i in Hone]'- 

 Production — Which i 



Written for the American Bee Journal 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



It ■would seem by reading page 550, 

 that Mr. Dadant, like the "Children 

 of Israel," as we are told in the " good 

 book," must have " precept upon pre- 

 cept, line upon line, here a little and 

 there a little," before he can under- 

 stand the position taken bj- us who 

 believe that a large brood-chamber is 

 not the thing to use when working for 

 comb honey. This being the case, let 

 me try again and see if 1 cannot make 

 it a little plainer for him. 



I believe that it. is conceded by all, 

 that no colony of bees in earl}' spring 

 needs so large a hive as they do in the 

 latter part of June when the storing 

 season commences, and when the bees 

 are more numerous than they were 

 three months previous. 



At the beginning of the season, or, 

 saj' the middle of April, in this locality, 

 a hive just large enough to accommo- 

 date the bees with ten pounds of 

 honey, |)laces them in the best possible 

 condition for the next month to come. 

 During this month they will have con- 

 verted the ten pounds of honey into 

 brood, when they are ready for more 

 room, for, as a rule, when this honey 

 in such a small hive is turned into 



brood, the combs contained by it are 

 practically full of brood. 



If we now add one or two frames of 

 honey at the sides of this brood, we 

 again place the bees in splendid condi- 

 tion for ten days more, at which time 

 honey will be coming in slowly from 

 the fields, so if the queen needs more 

 room, frames of empty comb should 

 now be added, instead of frames of 

 honey, thus enabling the bees to use 

 this honey for brood purposes, rather 

 than storing it in the brood-combs; or, 

 in other words, keeping that which 

 would now be set in, if we still used 

 combs of honey. 



lu this way the colony is worked, 

 keeping just the right amount of room 

 in it which the queen can keep tilled 

 with brood until the honey harvest 

 really commences. When this occui'S, 

 we do not want any more in the brood- 

 chamber than has become tilled with 

 brood up to that time ; but the rest of 

 the room needed now, is to be added 

 by way of a surplus arrangement. 



Now with me and many others, it 

 has been found that the average queen 

 will not occupy more than nine Gallup 

 frames, or eight Langstroth frames 

 with brood before the main honey 

 harvest commences, therefore I set 

 such down as the right size of brood- 

 chamber for me to use. 



In Mr. Dadant's fifth and sixth para- 1 

 graphs, I see he failed to correctly 

 read my article on page 503, for he 

 there quotes me as saying what cannot 

 be found in my article. What I did 

 say was, that at the begi?ining of the 

 season 2 colonies were set apart for 

 special purposes — one to be worked 

 for comb honey, and one for extracted 

 honey ; and, I may add, that when set 

 apart neither had brood in over four 

 combs; hence the "trap" which he 

 thinks has caught Doolittle, has another 

 "D"init. The colonies were both 

 worked on the above plan until near 

 the honey harvest, and both kept in my 

 usual hive until then, when the one 

 worked for extracted honey was put 

 into a " long i<lea" hive, for the rea- 

 son that I want a large hive for ex- 

 tracted honey — not a large brood- 

 chamber. 



In those days, perforated metal was 

 unknown, hence the queen could not 

 be restricted, so she had her own way, 

 tilling the combs with brood to the 

 amount of 15 frames full, all of which 

 above the 9 frames full, became useless 

 consumers, or mostly so after the har- 

 vest was past. 



This brings me to a point that is 

 overlooked by nearly all the advocates 

 of large hives. A large hive when 

 worked for comb honey is almost sure 

 to give one of two things which re- 

 sults in loss to the apiarist, viz : 



The first is the one mentioned — that 

 of rearing useless consumers. The 

 queen will often begin laying rapidlj" 

 at the beginning of the honey harvest, 

 spreading the brood further and 

 further, the workers using the honey 

 that is being gathered to feed this 

 brood until near the close of the 

 honej' harvest, when they seem to 

 realize that they must retrench. 



They now store honey in the combs as 

 fast as the brood hatches out, only to 

 be consumed by this same brood when 

 hatched out into bees, after the honey 

 harvest is past. Consequently we are 

 taking of the best part of our honey 

 harvest to feed this brood, which is to 

 eat what is left after they are hatched. 

 I have seen hundreds of hives la 

 neighboring apiaj'ies, years ago, that 

 were black with bees, nearly .all over, 

 in August, hanging on the outside of 

 the hive idle, day after day and week 

 after week, until they died of old age. 

 The second is, that instead of the 

 queen spreading her brood as above, 

 when the honey harvest commences, 

 the bees fill the combs not filled with 

 brood with honey, so that instead of 

 the first honey going into the honey- 

 boxes, it goes into the brood-chamber. 

 As the brood hatches out, more room 

 is given for the storing of hone}' below, 

 and so the bees keep storing there till 

 the end of the season, which results in 

 having about one-half the honey we 

 should have obtained, stored in the 

 brood-chamber in imsalable shape, 

 while the colony is in poor condition 

 for winter, they having too few bees- 

 for wintering safely. 



If Mr. Dadant will turn to page 127. 

 of "Mysteries of Bee-Keeping Ex- 

 plained," he will see that as long ago 

 as 1865, Mr. Quinby realized some- 

 thing of these difliculties while using 

 a hive similar to the one Mr. D. is now 

 using ; for he there tells us how the ex- 

 tra comb, or that not filled with brood, 

 can be tilled with inferior honey, by 

 feeding just prior to the honey harvest, 

 "SO that when clover appears there is 

 no room for the clover honey, except 

 in the boxes." 



Why I said that I would use large 

 hives for extractetl honey, is for the 

 reason that I like to use the same size 

 of frames for extracting as I use in the 

 brood-chamber. If I were to use an 

 odd size of frame to have the honey 

 stored in for extracting, as some rec- 

 ommend, then I would use no larger 

 hives for extracted honey than for 

 coinb honey. 



As to the relative prices of the two 

 kinds of honey, I notice that Mr. D. 

 quotes Mr. Root's selling price, and 

 then argues from these prices. Mr. 

 Root buys very little, if any, honey 

 from New York State, hence his prices 

 have little or nothing to do with us. 



