Correspondence* 



For tbe American Bee Journal. 



Hiving Swarms and Various Matters. 



G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



I see in Gleanings for July that A. I. 

 Eoot thinks it strange that Mr. Willows' 

 swarm of bees should have returned to 

 the parent colony after being placed in 

 a hive containing a frame of brood : as 

 if a frame of unsealed brood was a sure 

 preventive of a swarm leaving a hive 

 wherein it was put. I have every rea- 

 son to believe that such brood is no pre- 

 vention at all, although such a course 

 has been recommended through the 

 press for years. 



Up to 1871 1 had clipped no queens' 

 wings, and had hived my swarms in 

 empty hives. During the spring of 1871 

 I read of this plan of putting a frame 

 of brood in the hive the bees were to be 

 placed in, to make them stay at all 

 times. Consequently, the first swarm I 

 had (a large one) I placed in a hive con- 

 taining a frame of brood in all stages. 

 The swarm was hived at 2 p. m., and be- 

 fore 9 o'clock the next morning it came 

 out and decamped for parts unknown, 

 leaving a handful of bees, two small 

 pieces of new comb, and the frame of 

 brood with queen-cells started and 

 eggs laid in them. Then I thought, why 

 do Dees swarm except to leave the brood 

 contained in the old hive with queen- 

 cells, so that the bees remaining with 

 the brood could still continue the exist- 

 ence of the old colony. So I had been 

 placing in their new home just what 

 they had swarmed from in their old one, 

 except the queen-cells which they see 

 fit to add, thus placing them in a similar 

 condition to that which they sustained 

 before— they not realizing the difference 

 between one frame or many. If I had 

 filled the hive with empty combs except 

 this one frame the case would have been 

 different, as then it would have been 

 like adding plenty of empty combs as 

 we do in extracting. 



1 have many times verified the truth 

 of Mr. Quinhy's statement, that al- 

 though tin- amount of 2,000 cubic inches 

 of comb be placed in a barrel or box of 

 4 limes its size, yet the bees will gener- 

 ally swarm before they will build any 

 new comb : while if the whole space be 

 tilled with comb, they will rarely swarm. 

 1 have had swarms leave unsealed brood 

 several times since 1871, under similar 

 conditions, yet. as I have clipped all 

 queens' wings since then, I have sus- 



ained no loss as regards swarms leav- 



ing. However, swarms hived with a 

 frame of brood will generally stay, but 

 this is not an absolute rule. 'Still, this 

 was not the trouble with Mr. Willows 1 

 bees, as he says they were quiet about 

 15 minutes after being hived, when they 

 came out and returned to the old 

 hive. 



This proves that they had no queen 

 with them, for brood will not satisfy 

 bees which swarm with a fertile queen, 

 as they will go back to the old hive to 

 find her as soon as fully aware of her 

 absence. 



I once tried letting the old queen go 

 back in the old hive, and putting a vir- 

 gin queen with the swarm while they 

 were clustered on the limb, after which 

 I hived them ; but it would not do. 

 Back they would come to their old hive, 

 leaving my virgin queen clustered in a 

 ball of bees. By rearing queens in nu- 

 clei, and after fertile giving them to 

 swarms as above, I have succeeded quite 

 often, but not always. 



Seeing I have friend Root's ear, I wish 

 to say a little more. On page 340 same 

 number of Gleanings, Novice has much 

 to say about charity for our fellow men, 

 while right on the same page I find 

 these words : " I would burn up the best 

 hive I ever saw or heard of, or give it 

 to the first man who would wheel it 

 away without asking questions, if it did 

 not hold the regular standard Lang- 

 stroth frame." It is a pity friend Root 

 could not have said so at the time he 

 w^as sending his " Standard " hives and 

 frames over the country, instead of now r 

 saying : " The quicker you throw them 

 away and commence in the beaten 

 track with the rest of the world the 

 better." Does he not know that all 

 these things cost money, and for Prof. 

 Cook and myself to throw away our 

 hives would cost us quite a sacrifice to 

 make up for his lack of charity toward 

 anything but the " standard Langstroth 

 frame ?" It was said that Greeley, 

 through the New York Tribune, forced 

 the Army of the Potomac on to the 

 battle of Bull Run and defeat, as Gree- 

 ley, through the Tribune, so influenced 

 the minds of the people that President 

 Lincoln was compelled, as it were, to 

 order the army on to this battle. So 

 Novice, through Gleanings, has his influ- 

 ence overnearly 5,000 people on the hive 

 question, and if he sees fit to tell these 

 people that the " standard Langstroth 

 frame" is the frame, and none other, we 

 who use the Gallup, Quinby and other 

 frames, will try to have much charity 

 for him and those he really forces, 

 through Gleanings, to use nothing but 

 the Langstroth frame. 



Borodino, N. Y., July, 1880. 



