166 



'I HE AM ERIC AA BEE- KEEPER. 



A strange circum stance, I admit, but 

 for ray locality such is the case. It is 

 too large to manipulate without a great 

 deal of labor, and too small to furnish 

 the queen with what comb space she 

 could occupy and keep full of brood 

 in the early part of the season, just 

 when I need it to build up my colon- 

 ies for the locust, poplar and white 

 clover bloom. They are also too long 

 and too wide for their depth, giving 

 combs too shallow, or as I term it, 

 giving us a hive that is not properly 

 proportioned to meet the requirements 

 and natural instincts and inclinations 

 of the bees, causing too much lateral 

 spreading of the brood nest. 



This is one reason why the bees in 

 box hives keep so nearly up with my 

 bees in the chaff hives. I have trans- 

 ferred bees from box hives built sol- 

 idly full of combs that contaiued twice 

 as many cubic inches as one brood 

 chamber of the Simplicity hive, (which 

 is about the same as the L. hive), and 

 generally obtained enough brood to 

 fill ten Simplicity frames with some 

 scraps left, which I had to place over 

 the honey board to hatch out, and I 

 invariably found that the same queen 

 failed to keep the ten L. frames filled 

 with brood, when placed in the brood 

 chamber of a Simplicity hive. About 

 eight frames was all I could get them 

 to keep filled of brood. I have taken 

 the centre frames of brood and placed 

 on the outside of the brood nest, but 

 as the young bees hatched out the 

 queen would neglect to fill them up 

 with eggs. 



About the first of June, 1889, I 

 transferred a colony from an extra 

 large "gum," It was full of comb and 

 I obtained more than twelve Simplic- 



ity frames full of brood. I was elated 

 and thought " now I have a qneen that 

 will keep the ten frames full of brood," 

 bin to ray surprise, the result was the 

 same as before, only about eight frames; 

 occupied by the queen. " What could 

 the matter be ? " I asked of myself. 

 Here was a " gum " containing about 

 three times as much comb space as the 

 Simplicity body, and here too was the 

 same queen that kept the equivalent 

 of more than twelve frames full of 

 brood while in it, and only able to keep 

 eight tilled when placed in the Sim- 

 plicity hive. Honey was coining in at a 

 good rate, hut most of it was stored in 

 outside brood frames instead of in the 

 sections. Now, why this falling off 

 of ^ in brood rearing ? I measured the 

 comb. The diameter was 18 in. ; just 

 3| in. greater than my Simplicity is 

 wide, and one inch greater than the 

 comb in the Simplicity frame is in 

 length. Certainly not enough differ- 

 ence in size to cause so great a differ- 

 ence in brood rearing. 



But how about the length ? I meas- 

 ured again and found the length near- 

 ly 25 in., nearly three times the depth 

 of the combs in the L. frames. There- 

 fore, I have drawn this conclusion, 

 that the only secret about it was, that 

 the "gum " was better proportioned 

 to meet the requirements and inclina- 

 tions of the bees, and that in the L. 

 hives the bees could not give me their 

 best results on account of not having 

 a hive that fully met their needs. 



Concord Church, W. Va. ' 



i To l>< continued.) 



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