358 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



May 18, 190S 



of its sides ; and it will take an exceedingly careful and an ex- 

 traordinarily good carpenter to Tnake 100 pieces anywhere 

 near mathematically alike. Even if he is so clever as to be 

 able to do this, I still hold that he is wasting his time, for so 

 expert a laborer could obtain the biggest kind of wages for 

 his work, enough in a week to enable him to buy 30 or 40 hives. 



No, sir ! the best carpenter — the best cabinet-maker — 

 using the best lumber to be had, is still wasting his time in 

 making his own hives ; and the better workman he is the 

 more he is wasting when he tries with hand-labor to compete 

 with machinery in turning out exact duplicates of anything. 

 It takes too much time, entirely. 



I would no' thiuk of making all my own hives, though I 

 have the necessary tools and ability to do so, but will con- 

 tinue to buy till present prices are at least doubled, and I 

 don't know that I would make my own even then. Buy your 

 hives vi\th.&veiy part accurately cut — to fit perfectly where 

 each is meant to go, and to be interchangeable with any and 

 every hive in the apiary. And this even without considering 

 the question of cost. For the manufactured hives all cut by 

 machinery are so far ahead of any that can be made by hand 

 that they should be, and are, worth more monev. 



I can, and have, made exact duplicates of the manufac- 

 tured hive, but at such a cost in time and labor, without 

 counting the cost of the lumber and the waste of lumber, that 

 I decidedly consider the hand-made hive, when made as accu- 

 rately as the machine-made hive, to be absolutely prohibit- 

 ively expensive. "A Bee-keeper IN Virginia."' 



Augusta Co., Va. 



P. S. — I have no connection with any manufactory, nor 

 any supply-house, and am in no way concerned with the sale 

 of any single appliance used by bee-keepers. 



HOME-MADE BEK-SUPPLIES. 



I have been quite interested in the controversy relating to 

 bee-keepers making their own bee-hives, supers, eic, some 

 claiming the manufacturers are charging too high a price for 

 their goods, others that they can be made for less, and that, 

 besides, one does not make as good an article as the factories 

 turn out. 



I have made my hives and fixtures for two years, and I 

 am sure it pays me well to make them. I do not make them 

 all by hand. I made a machine which cost me $3.00 for 

 foundry work, and $2.00 for two 8-inch saws— $5.00 in all. It 

 is very much the same as the foot-power machines advertised, 

 only mine has the table rigid. I raise and lower the saw by a 

 treadle, with stop to prevent cutting beyond the proper depth, 

 and when through it drops below the table out of the way. 

 Or the saw is made rigid by tightening a thumb-screw, hold- 

 ing the saw-frame solid between the legs of the machine. My 

 saw is run by a power wind-mill 16 feet. The saw makes a's 

 many as 5000 revolutions a minute, and cuts as smooth as a 

 plane. 



To make 4 supers, I take one board 10 inches by 12 feet- 

 second clear lumber, costing $26 per 1000 feet, which would 

 make the one board cost 26 cents; 8 flat tins 4 cents— total, 

 30 cents, or Di cents per super. These are listed in most of 

 the catalogs at 10 in tbc flat for $4.00. The same things cost 

 me 75 cents. Of course I have made no account of work, but 

 as I could cut out 300 supers a day, that would not increase 

 the cost very much, even if my time was very valuable, which 

 it is not. This estimate applied to hives holds equally as 

 good. Thus, it would seem that there is a fine profit for some- 

 body. Of course the large bee-hive concerns probably get 

 their lumber cheaper than I do, but they are to an enormous 

 expense for machinery, skilled labor, and many other items 

 which go to swell the amount. 



I am not finding fault with the prices quoted by any 

 manufacturer of bee-supplies. I simply claim that it pays 

 one to make his own hives and fixtures as far as he can. There 

 are some things that it is better to buy than to make, such as 

 sections, fences, and wood or tin separators. I would not 

 want to make my own hives by hand-work alone, but would 

 rather pay the prices asked than to tackle that, as it makes 

 me nervous. I tried it once. I should like to hear through 

 the American Bee .7ournal from others who have tried mak- 

 ing their own hives. A. D. HusoN. 



Sheboygan Co., Wis., April 24. 



Some Facts About Honey and Bees.— This is the 

 subject of an article written by Mr. J. E. Johnson, and pub- 

 lished on pag-es 581-82 of the American Bee Journal for 

 Aug. 25, 1904. We have republished it in 4-page leaflet 

 form for general distribution, and furnish it, postpaid, at 

 35 cents per 100 copies. Send all orders to the office of the 

 American Bee Journal 



Season of 1904— Swarming Management 



BY C. DAVEKPOBT 



THE honey crop here last year was light, and the word 

 " light " in this case may be used in a double sense, as 

 the crop was light in quantity and color. Hardly any 

 dark or amber honey was gathered last fall, and last winter, 

 or rather spring, there was a severe loss of bees. With one 

 exception I never had bees spring dwindle like they did last 

 spring. What caused it is more than I know. The weather 

 and early spring flows were not very favorable. But I have 

 seen the conditions worse, when no spring dwindling to 

 amount to anything occurred. The previous fall enough fall 

 honey was gathered to keep brood-rearing up in good shape, 

 so it was not the lack of young bees that caused this loss last 

 spring. 



I have noticed that a good many think that if no fall 

 honey is secured to keep up brood-rearing late, so that the 

 colonies go into winter quarters without many young bees, 

 that spring dwindling will, or is apt to, result. This looks 

 very reasonable, and maybe the case in most instances. 



But I well remember one fall when no fall honey was 

 gathered, and brood-rearing stopped earlier than I ever knew 

 it to do before or since. I expected that there would be a 

 heavy loss the next spring, but I never had bees come through 

 the spring, or build up better, than they did. 



I think that it was 10 years ago last spring that there 

 was the most severe spring loss of bees around here that there 

 has been in my time. The late Mr. B. Taylor, the most promi- 

 nent apiarist in our State at that time, in writing about his 

 severe loss, said that it was his Waterloo. Mr. Taylor thought 

 that the great loss was because not enough young bees were 

 reared late the previous fall ; but in my own yards enough 

 fall honey was secured to keep brood-rearing up late, so in 

 neither case was it a lack of young bees that caused my own 

 severe loss of bees by spring dwindling. 



Now, owing to the loss of bees last spring, and the light 

 crop gathered by what were left, the season was, in a finan- 

 cial way, the poorest I have known in a good many years. In 

 other ways though — " those things we would not sell for 

 money " — it was far different. 



In the first place, I have finally found a. practical y/a,y to 

 render comb into wax ^nd secure all the wax, no matter how 

 old the comb is. I have spent what is, for a bee-keeper, a 

 large amount of money, besides a large amount of work and 

 time, over this problem, and I am glad to say that I have 

 solved it. No machine or screw press is used, yet I can ren- 

 der more wax from any kind of comb and leave less wax in 

 the slumgum than can be done with any press machine that 

 is made, or can be made and operated by one man. 



But this is a small matter compared to what I learned, or 

 rather verified last season in regard to artificial swarming. 

 As a good many who will read this know, I am a specialist, 

 and devote my whole time to our pursuit, and that I have for 

 a good many years practiced artificial swarming. Some 10 or 

 12 years ago, in the American Bee Journal, I described my 

 method, which was, in brief, to remove all the brood. Not 

 much attention was paid to it at the time, and what comment 

 there was about it was unfavorable, but of late this matter 

 has been given a good deal of prominence in all our journals 

 under the names of "shook" or "brushed" swarms. Of 

 course, it makes no difiference whether the bees are shaken or 

 brushed, the essential principle is to remove all the brood, for 

 if all the brood is not removed, the colony, if it has contracted 

 the swarming fever, will be very apt to swarm in a few days 

 if only one frame is left. I preferred this method to natural 

 swarming, but one very great objection to it is tliat a colony 

 swarmed by this " shook " or brushed plan is very apt to 

 swarm out again the next day, and sometimes they will swarm 

 out a number of times before settling down to work ; and in 

 some cases, if they do not swarm out, they sulk or refuse to 

 work much for a number of days. And, again, others 

 "swarmed" in this way never vior^ with any vim or energy. 



But the swarming out is the worst part, for in a large yard, 

 where a large number of colonies have been swarmed one day, 

 the next day there may be a dozen swarms all out in a snarl 

 together. Here, just as sure as fate, if a colony is swarmed 

 by this method, after they have a queen-cell sealed they will 

 swarm out. I never knew an exception to this in all the years 

 I have practiced swarming in this way. There must, though, 

 be a difference — shall I use our old' stand-by, "locality?" — 

 in regard to this swarming out, for some have reported 

 through the journals that they had no trouble in this respect, 

 while others have had, and last fall, while at our State Fair, 

 I met a good many bee-keepers from this State, and also a 

 number from Wisconsin, and I talked with all of them abou t 



