THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



119 



QUEEN - EXCLUDING HONEY - BOARDS. 



Some of their Advantages. 



In the production of comb honey it is 

 often possible to dispense with the use 

 of queen-excluders, but there are cer- 

 tainly advantages in their use in the 

 production of extracted hone}', and I 

 have never seen those advantages more 

 clearly set forth than they are given 

 by C. Davenport in the American Bee 

 Journal. He says: — 



Let us take a strong, or medium 

 strong, colony early in the spring, that 

 is, to run for extracted honey. We 

 will say that it is in either an 8 or 10 

 frame-hive, for there is not much dif- 

 ference in results here between the two 

 sizes in running for extracted honey. 

 On the first colony we will not use an 

 excluder. If it is a strong colony it 

 will, during fruit bloom, need an upper 

 story; and in a short time the queen 

 will invariably work up into this 

 story, and more or less of these combs 

 will be filled with brood. But now 

 note this: It is very seldom that there 

 is more brood in both of these stories 

 before the main flow commences than 

 the lower one would hold, especially 

 if we are using lO-frame hives. We 

 now have the frames in these two 

 stories more or less filled wtth honey, 

 and brood. The main flow is on, and 

 soon more room is needed. There is 

 nothing in either story fit to extract, so 

 another story is added, and the queen 

 will, nine times out of ten, lay more or 

 less in this third story, but she will 

 seldom go down to the lower story, of 

 her own accord, again that season, 

 unless the colony swarms and she does 

 so in order to get out of the hive. It is 

 now three stories high, which is about 

 as high as it is safe for us to go here 

 without danger of the whole thing 

 being blown over during some of the 

 sudden storms with high winds which 

 we are subject to in the summer. 



But if the flow continues good, more 

 room is soon needed, and this whole 

 outfit, boiling over with bees, old bees, 

 young bees, drones, queen — soinewhete 

 in the two upper stores — brood in all 



stages, pollen and honey — is all 

 mixed up. We take what honey we 

 can get; this may be considerable, but 

 it is never first-class honey that we get 

 from such an outfit. It is tainted more 

 or less with pollen, the excrement from 

 young, just-hatchiug bees, larvae and 

 larval food. If we don't extract from 

 frames containing brood we will get 

 very little honey, for there is a little 

 brood in a lai'ge part of them. A good 

 many who would have to handle 100 

 colonies in this way would wish the 

 flow to be short, so that there would be 

 only one extracting. We will suppose 

 this to be the case. The whole thing 

 has to be handled frame by frame once 

 more in the fall any way in order to get 

 the colon}' in size, shape and condition 

 to be wintered. 



Now let us take a colony and use an 

 excluder. V\ here more room is needed 

 we place on the excluder and upper 

 story, and know that the queen is, and 

 will stay, where she belongs — in the 

 brood nest. The bees at once com- 

 mence to store honey in this upper 

 story, if they lack either storage or 

 brood room below; usually by this time 

 not much more pollen is being gathered 

 than is in demand for brood-rearing, 

 and this is stored below, near the 

 brood. As the flow continues we place 

 another empty story under the first 

 one. B}' the time more room is needed, 

 the combs in the upper story will be 

 filled and sealed nearly solid with 

 beautiful snow white honey. In order 

 to clear this of bees, all thtit is neces- 

 sary in the evening is to raise up one 

 end and slip under an escape-board; 

 by morning the bees will have gone 

 below, and we have the combs clear of 

 bees, and ready to extract. And, m}' 

 friends, this is honey — pure, unmixed, 

 first-class honey, gathered by bees 

 from flowers. After extracting, this 

 set of now empty combs is placed next, 

 and the other set on top of it, and so on 

 as long as the flow continues, and we 

 don't care liow many times we have to 

 extract, for it is a pleasure to produce 

 extracted honey by this plan. We ex- 

 perience and feel a good many of those 

 things we would not sell for money if 

 we could. 



In the fall — well, there are dift'erent 

 plans that can be practiced to get this 



