716 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



Oct. 12 1905 



or 12 others partially filled with comb, about 

 one-fourth of which is drone-comb. 



Frequent practice on this first hive dissi- 

 pated " bee-trembles," and June 7 a second 

 empty hive was bought, into which was put a 

 1-frame nucleus of bees and a select tested 

 golden Italian queen. On each side of the 

 nucleus were hung full sheets of foundation, 

 the remaining frames being fitted with half 

 sheets of foundation. Despite excessive rains 

 during the summer (about 3 feet of rainfall) 

 the yellow bees have prospered, and the hive 

 now contains 5 frataes of brood, 2 frames full 

 of honey, and 3 frames being drawn out in 

 snowy comb; there is promise that this col- 

 ony will be very strong before cold weather 

 in December. 



After reading all available bee-catalogs, a 

 copy of "Langstroth on the Honey-Bee" was 

 purchased, and the American Bee Journal 

 subscribed for. Then my troubles began; 

 between the conflict of opinions in the book 

 and Journal, aggravated by " original " views 

 of neighbors, I am floored. One authority 

 maintains that a deep frame is best, another 

 contends for the shallow closed-end frame; 

 neighbor B says my 10-frame hives are too 

 wide, while neighbor C tells me that B knows 

 nothing about bees, and so it goes. In the 

 meantime the reading is continued, the bees 

 themselves are watched, and I am beginning 

 to have opinions of my own. 



1. Well, in anticipation of next year I must 

 soon determine the style of hive best adapted 

 to this section of country ; my conclusions 

 based on reading, asking, and three months' 

 observation of two hives, inclines me to the 

 deep Langstroth (ll'i inches) with lO-frames 

 and full sheets of loundation. This large 

 hive full of hustling bees should yield (theo- 

 retically) excellent results. Do you think so, 

 too? 



2. Will any advantage follow the use of a 

 telescope cover (as on the Langstroth-Dadant 

 hive), furnishing about ij inch air-space all 

 around the super and upper edge of the hive- 

 body, comb honey being wanted from some 

 and extracted honey from other hives? The 

 hives are to be left outdoors all winter, en- 

 trances reduced, and absorbent (dried maple 

 leaves) put over the brood-chamber. 



3. My hives are on stands one foot high. Is 

 it better to have them rest on the ground? 



4 Is the Alley method of queen-rearing 

 suited to a novice? I know more about rear- 

 ing beetles and bugs than about " growing 

 bees." 



L.5. If virgin queens are reared from the 

 golden Italian queen, and drones from the so- 

 called "Adel" Italian queen, will such a 

 cross produce useful workers, or will there be 

 a tendency towards prettiness at the expense 

 of other and more valuable qualities? 



While bee-keeping with me is not primarily 

 a money-making venture, I want to start 

 right. There is a fascination about it, and I 

 continue to wonder why I never " took to the 

 varmints (?) " before. Virginian. 



Answers. — I have read with no little in- 

 terest the account of your perplexities on 

 being initiated into the ranks of bee-keepers. 

 You may just as well make up your mind 

 that you will always meet such contradic- 

 tions. For more than 40 years I've been at it, 

 and there seem to be just as many contradic- 

 tory views as ever. But it will hardly kill 

 you. The fact that I am still alive, and out- 

 side the walls of an insane asylum, may re- 

 assure you. Indeed, I think that one of the 

 fascinating things about bee-keeping is that 

 very element of uncertainty; always some 

 unsettled problem, always the search after 

 the truth, which, in many cases, eludes one's 

 grasp like a will-o'-the-wisp, but always with 

 just enough success to make one eager to 

 keep up the pursuit. I hope that your in- 

 terest may increase rather than abate, and 

 that this may not be the last time you are 

 driven to this Question-Box. 



1. I'm afraid you'll have to do some ex- 

 perimenting on your own account before you 

 can have a satisfactory answer to your ques- 

 tion. One thing in favor of such large hives 

 is the freedom from swarming. Yet you can 

 not count too strongly on that. At one time 

 I had two " Jumbo '■ hives, and looked for- 

 ward hopefully to good results the following 

 year. Would you believe it? the next sum- 

 mer the first swarm I had issued from one of 



these Jumbo hives ! For extracting you can 

 count pretty safely on them ; but as to comb 

 there is need of experimenting riijht in your 

 locality. 



2. Yes, that space will be of value. Instead 

 of air, it might be better to have it filled with 

 cork-dust. 



3. Better for the hives to be up ; better for 

 the operator to have them down. Also a lit- 

 tle better for the bees to have them down. 

 They can crawl in more easily when they 

 drop to the ground heavily-laden in front of 

 the hive. Try most of them down. 



4. Yes, there's nothing difficult about it. 



5. If ijoth parents are good I see no reason 

 why the cross should not be good. 



Kcports anh 

 (fxpcrtenccs 



Very Poof Season for Bees 



The season of 1905 started off in elegant 

 shape. White clover came on early, and 

 things were humming — -especially the bees — 

 and we got ready to swipe a large lot of sweet 

 stuff. Things went on swimmingly, and we got 

 the supers on— 2, 3 and 4 to the hive — and the 

 bees were just tumbling over each other to fill 

 them, and we were leaning back in our easy 

 chair thinking what a lot of honey we were 

 going to have to sell, and planning how we 

 would spend the money we got for it — when, 

 all at once without warning, presto ! and the 

 honey-gathering stopped, and the bees got 

 cross and hung around the hives and house 

 looking for a scrap ; and all this before we 

 had gotten a single section of honey filled 

 out! 



White clover continued to bloom, but the 

 bees paid no attention to it, and did no more 

 gathering until the heartsease came on, and 

 we have had so much rain and east wind that 

 they have not done much on that. We will 

 have a few hundred pounds of extracted, but 

 no comb honey to speak of. Well, we sup- 

 pose such is life in the West, and in other 

 places as well. 



The American Bee Journal is like Castoria 

 or Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup in a family 

 of children — we can't get along without it. 

 We would like to have it every day, but as we 

 can't we will take it as often as we can get it. 

 Long may it continue to enlighten the Ameri- 

 can public on the subjects of bee-keeping 

 and — so-called manufactured comb honey. 

 J. M. LiNSCOTT. 



Gage Co., Nebr., Sept. 21. 



A Summer's Experience with 3 



, __ C olonies ^ L:::;^ 



I desire to present a few facts from my ex- 

 perience this summer in the management of 3 

 colonies of bees, which appears to me to be im- 

 portant when the end aimed at is pounds -of 

 honey. 



In the fall of 1904 I put into the cellar 2 

 strong colonies of bees in 10-frame hives; also 

 one nucleus. One of the strong colonies had 

 an Italian queen and the other a native 

 queen; there was also a native queen in the 

 nucleus. 



About March 20 I took them out, all 3 in 

 apparently fine condition. The 2 strong col- 

 onies built up rapidly, the Italian rather out- 

 stripping its darker rival both in honey and 

 brood, when about May 20 each had honey 

 and brood in 10 frames. I then gave each of 

 them 10 frames in another brood-chamber, 

 supplied partly with full sheets of foundation 

 and partly with comb, moving a frame of 

 brood into the upper story, making a 20- 

 frame hive of each. 



At about this time I noticed that the nu- 

 cleus was not thriving, and an examination 



Norther n King Queens 



One Untested, 50c; Tested, $1.00. Try one. 

 Address, B. F. SCHMIDT, R.F.D. 1, 

 North Buena Vista, Clayton Co., Iowa. 



showed that they were queenless. I gave 

 them a frame of brood from the Italian col- 

 ony, and they were slow about starting 

 queen-cells, but in due time I had an inferior 

 looking queen, which I replaced a little later 

 with a queen purchased in the South. 



About June 20 I noticed, while examining 

 the Italian colony, a frame in the upper 

 brood-chamber with 2 uncapped queen-cells 

 with an embryo queen in each — a most un- 

 welcome condition of things, as I had decided 

 to test the merits of those 2 strong colo- 

 nies. Accepting what appeared to me to be 

 inevitable (swarming), I decided to anticipate 

 the job, and about a week later I brushed the 

 bees into an 8 frame hive, gave them 6 frames 

 with starters, and contracted the brood-cham- 

 ber to meet the conditions, and put on a sec- 

 tion super with queen-excluding zinc-board. 



I was surprised while looking over the 

 frames of brood in not finding more than the 2 

 queen-cells, which I had previously noticed. 

 I destroyed one of the queen-cells and started 

 a nucleus with the other, using 4 frames of 

 brood and honey. The other 16 frames I put 

 with the original nucleus, which I wintered 

 over. 



About July 20 the original colony of Ital- 

 ians, which were now confined to 6 frames, 

 swarmed. I happened to be in the garden at 

 the time. The old queen came out with the 

 bees in a condition apparently too feeble to 

 fiy, and I found her crawling around on the 

 ground near the entrance. I caged her and 



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