62 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[Sept., 



came out in first rate order ; thirty or thirty-one 

 were in bad condition, being weak in numbers 

 and in stores, having suffered from the " dysen- 

 tery," and two were dead. His loss was very 

 small, compared with that of the beekeepers 

 generally in this section of the country, as most 

 lost from fifty to one hundred per cent, of the 

 number they had last fall. Those that were 

 weak, he stimulated by early and constant feed- 

 ing, until there was forage for them to gather, 

 and at the date of my visit there was not a 

 single hive which did not seem crowded with bees 

 and rich with stores ; excepting those only, from 

 which he had very recently extracted the honey, 

 and th«y were rapidly filling up with "liquid 

 sweets." 



He is using the extractor upon twenty-eight 

 hives, leaving the residue to store box honey. 

 And here I may mention that I never saw bees 

 take to the honey boxes with so little apparent 

 reluctance, as the doctor's bees do ; which I can 

 account for, only by ascribing it to the kind of 

 box which he uses. They are sectional, and 

 capable of being enlarged to any size to con- 

 form to the size of hive upon which they are to 

 be used, and may also be reduced to the size of 

 a single comb. The bottoms are made of slats, 

 such as are used in making frames for the brood 

 chamber, and so arranged as to set over the 

 frames in the brood department, but three- 

 eighths (f ) of an inch above them, thus mak- 

 ing them of easy access to the bees. The bees 

 seem to consider the surplus as a part of the 

 main hive, judging from the promptness with 

 which they build comb and store honey in them. 



The doctor does not rely upon natural swarm- 

 ing. alone, but swarms his bees at his own pleas- 

 ure. His plan is as follows : He takes an empty 

 hive and sets it in the place occupied by a full 

 one, which we shall denominate No. 1 ; thee he 

 removes the combs from No. 1, and brushes the 

 bees and queen all off in front of the empty hive, 

 and returns the combs to No. 1 ; he then removes 

 No. 2 (a full colony), and places No. 1 where 

 No. 2 stood, and places No. 2 on a new stand. 

 This is done while a large number of bees are 

 absent in the fields, aud appears to be a com- 

 plete success. 



We next examined his nucleus hives, and saw 

 some queens which for beauty and size would 

 be hard to excel. The hives in which the cells 

 are reared, indicate by their numbers that the 

 queen mothers are prodigies for prolificness, and 

 their worker progeny fully attest their purity. 

 The doctor is breeding queen bees to supply a 

 special demand from customers, which he is un- 

 able to do in fall. 



He showed me over two thousand pounds of 

 extracted honey — taken from twenty-eight hives, 

 which are of the number he had to feed in the 

 spring, at three throwings each — which would 

 make a man's mouth water. 



He is selling full stocks as fast as he increases 

 them by swarming, so that he will probably 

 winter not to exceed ninety colonies this wiuter. 

 His receipt against loss in winter, as well as for 

 a large yield of honey, is to " keep your colonies 

 always strong in numbers, if you have to feed 

 to accomplish it," and I am induced to accept it 



as an axiom, as his experience is to me conclu- 

 sive proof of its correctness. 



J. E. Richie. 



Li?7ia, Ohio, July, 1872. 



[For the Americau Bee Journal.] 



On the TJtilitv of Drones. 



A distinguished writer once said: "A cox- 

 comb is a drone in the human family." Bee- 

 keepers might say with as much truth that : "A 

 drone is a coxcomb in the bee family." Truly 

 drones are useful, but only to a certain extent. 

 If we ask Madame Nature why she caused so 

 many drones to exist, she will answer that in a 

 wild state hives are far apart and that a large 

 number of drones are necessary to insure the 

 queen's fertilization. Indeed, Madame Nature 

 never does anything to no purpose. 



But in our present state of bee culture, hives 

 are numerous and close together, for we see 

 sometimes as many as three or four hundred 

 stands together on an acre of ground. Many 

 apiaries number over fifty colonies. In these 

 places a large number of drones is undesirable. 

 The usual amount of drones hatched by three 

 hives would be sufficient to insure fertilization 

 of as many queens as can be raised in one apiary. 

 An apiary of one hundred hives probably raises 

 twenty times as many drones as necessary. 

 These drones are not only useless, they are also 

 noxious. First, they consume a great deal of 

 honey and require from the bees a great deal of 

 care. Then they are always in the way during 

 the working season, obstructing the entrance 

 with their clumsy bodies. Besides, lifter the 

 harvest is over, they have to be destroyed by the 

 bees. Some people say that they are very use- 

 ful to keep the brood warm. But I will beg my 

 readers to notice that drones never* exist except 

 at times when the weather is so warm that it 

 takes but very few bees to keep sufficient heat in 

 the hive. Experienced beekeepers also know 

 that the bees drive them away from the brood, 

 and destroy them as soon as the harvest ceases. 



What then shall we do to destroy the large 

 amount of drones that hatch in our hives every 

 year? The old fashioned beekeepers say : " Cut 

 their heads off before they hatch." But this 

 gives a great deal of work for the bees in clean- 

 ing out the cells. Besides, all the honey spent 

 on these drones is dead loss, and the combs are 

 still there for the queen to lay in at the first op- 

 portunity. Drone traps are out of the question 

 for the same cause. 



Once upon a time, there was a man who 

 travelled through the country selling patent hives 

 and the six secrets of beekeeping. One of his 

 secrets taught how to prevent drone laying. His 

 method was simply this: "Cut out the drone 

 comb." Was it not a miraculous invention? 

 The poor wretches that paid $10 for the knowl- 

 edge of the famous secrets probably pondered 

 more than once on the truth of the old saying : 

 "Nil sub sole novum." (Nothing new under the 

 sun.) Still, they did cut out the drone comb ; 

 but, alas ! the bees immediately went to work 



