170 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



the niiilit. the busy little fellows kept up such a 

 lou 1 noise that they could be heard for rods from 

 ihe hive ; and the following day they fill tlie cells 

 again, and the same process is gone through 

 anew. At night this then watery stuff is all 

 converted into the very best quality of honey. 

 All this is done, mind you, while the weather is 

 hot night and day. 



One more example. Several years ago, I knew 

 a man by the name of Gallup. He had quite 

 a number of good colonies, all in box hives; 

 and some time about the 10th of August, he 

 had seven stocks that had neither cast swarms 

 nor stored surplus honey. He drummed out a 

 large swarm from each, and put them into large 

 hives, sixteen inches square and fourteen inches 

 high ; and twenty-one days after, he drummed 

 out tiie remainder of the bees, as all the young 

 brood had then hatched ; and united them with 

 the first swarms. He then had seven hives 

 filled with pollen, &c., for sale or family use. 

 Did not he boast of what he had done ? No 

 swarm of bees could fool him out of his honey ! 

 Well, those new hives were all weighed before 

 the bees were put in, and they were weighed 

 again after the bees had done working for the 

 si-ason, and they averaged fifty-eight pounds, net, 

 after deducting the weight of the hive. Well, 

 you see that his neighbors had hives in the same 

 condition; but they did not drum them out, as 

 Gallup did — and did not he come over them ? 

 The fact is, that anything that this Gallup did 

 not know about bees was not worth knowing ! 

 Along in the winter these bees had the dysentery 

 pretty badly ; and by the first of March, every 

 swarm of the seven was dead — all starved ! Now 

 remember, that while the bees were gathering 

 this honey, the nights were very cool ; and the 

 hives being so large, it was impossible for the 

 bees to get up the necessary heat to evaporate it 

 properly. The last part of that perfoiinance 

 Gallup did not boast much about. However, he 

 made the discoverj^ that he did not know as much 

 as he thought for ; and when a person has made 

 that discovery, there is a great chance for him to 

 learn more. E. Gallup. 



Osage, Iowa. 



P. S. — I still think that the old age theory was 

 at the bottom of that bee-disease in this vicinity. 



[For tlie American Bee JournaL] 



Size of Hives and Product of Honey. 



I was int(?rested and instructed by the account 

 given by A. Grimm of his experience in bee- 

 keeping. By the experiments of twenty-seven 

 or eight years, with so great a variety of hives, 

 large and small, his opinion is certainly entitled 

 to much weight. I cannot claim a long expe- 

 rience or the use of any great variety of hives. 

 My experiments were commenced in 1860, in the 

 seventieth year of my age, and have thus far 

 been aimed to the securing a hive from which a 

 swarm maj^ be secured at the pleasure of the 

 keeper ; or the whole colony be continued con- 

 stantly atwoik, not delayed by the disposition to 

 swarm, and no time lost in preparation for it. 



My change in the hive, either in form or size, 

 has been partly to secure this or these objects. 



A word of explanation about the size of hives : 

 Mr. Grimm informs us that he has used hives 

 from seven hundred to four thousand eight hun- 

 dred cubic inches in the main apartment. This 

 main apartment is, in fact, the hive ; while the 

 boxes that form the receptacles of the surplus 

 honey, which are added or removed at pleasure, 

 do not form a part of the hive proper, that being 

 the apartment strictly given to breeding and 

 wintering. When the boxes are on they form 

 the principal part of the room for honey. The 

 breeding apartment is of the capacity of from 

 about one thousand to two thousand cubic inches, 

 I think probably from sixteen hundred to eighteen 

 hundred may be the best. When we come to the 

 boxes, the different sizes (of hives) have boxes 

 of from three thousand two hundred and forty 

 to nine thousand four hundred and four cubic 

 inches, holding from ninety to two hundred and 

 forty pounds. There may be a little more or less 

 than this, according to the manner in which the 

 comb is constructed. It will be s^en that the whole 

 room in the central apartment and the boxes, 

 ranges from four thousand two hundred and forty 

 cubic inches in the smallest, to eleven thou- 

 sand two hundred and forty in the largest. The 

 inquiry is, what advantage is secured by abun- 

 dant box room. 



1. All the workers will be actively employed 

 in storing honey. With no boxes and the hive 

 small, ail but those accommodated with room 

 witiiin, will cluster outside of the hive, and only 

 leave to get their daily jjrovision, and return to 

 cluster outside. If two small boxes are placed 

 on the hive, enough may gather in them to oc- 

 cupy the room ; and if no preparation is making 

 for swarming, they will store honey in the 

 boxes ; but the balance of the supernumeraries 

 will cluster out in idleness. If the boxes are all 

 placed on to make room for the whole colony, as 

 they increase they will enter the boxes and work 

 in them, unless preparations for swarming are 

 making. The result will be, honey will be ac- 

 cumulating in all the boxes, instead of in one or 

 two. I have known a colony storing honey in 

 twenty-five boxes at one time, and they gave one 

 hundred and forty-seven pounds of surplus. 

 Another colony worked in all its boxes at one 

 time, as many as twelve empty boxes were re- 

 quired to supply the place of as many full boxes 

 which were removed. They gave one hundred 

 and seventy-four pounds in the season. Does any 

 one believe they would have gathered as much 

 with only two or four small boxes upon the top 

 of the hive, changed six or eight times ? 



2. Bee-keepers understand well that during the 

 time of preparation for swarming, very little 

 surplus honey is stored. The most is used to 

 supply the brood and be ready to accompany the 

 queen in her emigration. I have several times 

 noticed colonies that I supposed were engaged 

 in filling the surplus boxes, that when the swarm 

 issued would leave their boxes and to my surprise 

 leave them entirely empty. The loss of a week, 

 and sometimes two weeks, right in the height 

 of the honey harvest from white clover may 

 make a difference of fifty to one hundred pounds. 



