114 THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER May 



latter and still breed from our breed- be stocked with brood and honey be- 

 ing queen only is difficult and a prob- fore forming nuclei, or for uniting the 

 lem I have not solved to my satisfac- nuclei in the latter part of the season, 

 tion. (Of course I am not a profes- In order to use these small sectional 

 sional queen breeder and am rearing frames as hanging frames in the mat- 

 queens during the swarming season ing boxes a projecting top bar must 

 only). The difficulty is in always hav- be fastened to each frame, which is 

 ing ripe cells and not having them easily and quickly accomplished by the 

 destroyed by bees or hatched queens. use of two window-blind staples. I 



If we can make the Swarthmore borrowed the idea from the Swarth- 



method of miniature nuclei a success more mating box. 



it would not be so very expensive and Too much stress canot be placed 



difficult to make use of a large batch upon keeping careful record of all our 



of cells at a time and thus use every queens and what their colonies are 



one our swarming colony builds; but doing. It matters not whether one 



heretofore we had to break up valu- uses a book, a tag, a slate or a piece 



able colonies to form four or five nuc- of board. I write on the honey-boards, 



from each. Manjr of us hesitated to and on many of them may be found 



do so, and often many of the best the record of ,the past ten or fifteen 



queen cells were lost. Swarthmore, years. This record is necessary so we 



Alley and others have been studying rnay know what queens to breed from, 



how to cut down the expenses of get- Anything remarkable about a colony 



ting queens fertilized. It would seem or their queen ought to be noted down 



to me that Swarthmore has almost for reference. We are then in shape 



gone to the extreme. While I have to select our breeders from among our 



succeeded with his liliputian fertilizing own bees. We bee-keepers are quite 



boxes, yet I believe the average honey apt to send to some breeder for a 



producer would succeed better by using choice queen, paying from three to five 



a larger frame than one 4 1-4x4 1-4 or more dollars for one, often to find 



and a larger body of bees. I think that our own stock is just as good. I 



a half-story frame cut in two vertically have been there myself and have come 



safer; each nucleus formed to contain to the conclusion that I would have 



two frames of brood and one of honey been just as well off if I had kept the 



to start with,, and two more frames money and bred from my own bees, 



may be added later. I could form Naples, N. Y., March 20, 1903. 



about twelve or fifteen nuclei from the 



brood oi one hive. The stocking up Equalizing for The Honey Flow. 

 with bees is best done by bringing 



them from the out-yard. I have prac- (Arthur C. Miller.) 



ticed that with good success; but have ^ir'HE following remarks are partic- 



alsp used the bees from queenless col- J[ ularly for persons of but few 



onies of the same yard. With us the years' experience, the veterans, 



swarming season continues over a long presumably, know most of it, but even 



period, commencing May 28 and last- they may well recall that it is the num- 



ing till August 15, and when a nucleus ber of strong colonies that count for 



hive of above size is once stocked up, a surplus crop and not the number of 



quite a number of queens may be mated hives with bees. How to get all the 



during this swarming period in every colonies strong has been the subject 



o"^- _ of many an article, and what I have to 



My mating hives, just built, are con- say here may not add much to what 



structed on the tenement plan, four has already been said, but perhaps by 



little colonies under one roof — each saying it in a different way I may 



one flying from a different side of the make some points more clear, 



hive. Each compartment is large When this meets the eyes of the 



enough to take in five frames. Four readers of the Bee-Keeper it will be 



of these may be slipped into my regu- too late to look for stimulative feeding 



lar brood frame the same as the eight for aid even if it were a really profita- 



4 1-4x4 1-4 Pratt frames, and may thus ble aid, which I believe it is not, so 



