174 



THE BEE-KEEPEKS' REVIEW 



During his absence the charge of the 

 work at the Department devolves upon 

 Dr. E. F. Phillips lately of the Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania, who has just 

 been appointed as one of Mr. Benton's 

 expert assistants. 



Introducing Queens with tobacco 

 smoke has been a great success with 

 me this spring. I have introduced 

 about 20 queens with it, with not one 

 failure. Just at dusk I load up the 

 smoker, and get it to going good, then 

 put in about a pipeful of tobacco, give 

 three or four puffs at the entrance, 

 take off the cover, and drive down the 

 bees with smoke, then allow the queen 

 to rundown between the combs, follow- 

 ing her with a few more puffs of smoke. 

 There is a query comes to me, might I 

 not have been just as successful with 

 smoke from planer shavings as with 

 that from tobacco ? I confess that I 

 don't know, but I have my doubts. 



After-swarming can be easily avoided 

 by a plan followed by Mr. Walter 

 Harmer of Manistee, Michigan. Early 

 in the season he rears queens from 

 choice stock, and starts nuclei, then, 

 when a colony swarms, he hives it in 

 the hive from which it issued, dimply 

 removing the brood, brushing off the 

 bees, and giving the combs of brood to 

 the nuclei that he has started, thus 

 gradually building them up into full 

 colonies. In this way all queens are 

 reared from selected stock, the swarm 

 on the old stand is re-inforced by the 

 young bees brushed from the combs of 

 brood, and all after-swarming is cer- 

 tainly avoided. 



The Sibbald system seems to be mis- 

 understood to a certain extent. Many 

 seem to think it a method of forestalling 

 swarming, the same as is the case 

 with shook-swarming. It is true that 

 a comb of bees, brood, and a queen cell 

 are placed upon the old stand, and the 



old colony set to one side, but, as a 

 rule, this change is made only tempo- 

 rariljs for about four days, until the 

 queen cells have been destroyed in the 

 old colony and the swarming fever has 

 subsided, when the divided portions of 

 the colony are again united. The 

 American Bee-Keeper says "The kernel 

 of the Sibbald method is in having the 

 forced swarm raise a queen, leaving 

 the old queen with the parent colony." 

 I beg pardon Mr. Bee-Keeper, but I 

 don't so understand it. As explained 

 above, the kernel is in getting rid of 

 the swarming fever in about four days, 

 and then uniting the two portions. To 

 be sure, as Mr. Sibbald says in his 

 article, the division can be permanent 

 if so desired, but this is not the lead- 

 ing feature of the system, as there are 

 probably other more desirable methods 

 of making a permanent division. 



Ventilation and room to get off the 

 combs are very important when full 

 colonies are to be shut in their hives 

 and moved in warm weather. In May 

 I bought 12 very populous colonies of 

 bees about 70 miles from home. I went 

 after them myself, and covered the 

 whole tops of the hives with wire cloth. 

 In addition to this, there was an empty 

 space upon each side of the brood nest, 

 and the bees could crawl out and 

 cluster in this space, yet one of the 

 colonies smothered before it left the 

 yard— and I am the editor of a bee 

 journal, too. The trouble was that 

 when the colonies were ready for ship- 

 ment, they were carried indoors and 

 left for the night. Fearing that it 

 might be too cool to leave the brood 

 nests uncovered over night, they were 

 partly covered with quilts. In the morn- 

 ing one colony was dead and the 

 honey running all over the floor. Oh ! 

 how hot the combs were. They would 

 almost burn the hand when placed 

 upon them. Then, on the way home, 

 another colony came pretty near going. 

 It seemed as though every bee stuck its 



