42 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



and how to do it. Ought I to contract 

 all summer, where the bees get enough 

 honey to breed strong all the time? 

 Also, there is lots of pollen here all 

 summer. 



2. In Mr. Simrains' essay on page 689 

 of the Bee Jouknal for 1893, he gives 

 as one of his means of preventing 

 swarming, the withdrawal of the two 

 outer combs, and inserting near the 

 center of the brood-nest two empty 

 frames. Are not these empty frames 

 apt to be filled with drone-comb ? 



3. On the same page he speaks of 

 rearing young queens in the fall to re- 

 queen with, also as a means of prevent- 

 ing swarming. What is the object of 

 rearing them In the fall ? 



4. Would not cells saved at the 

 swarming season do as well ? 



5. Where the bees of a neighborhood 

 are about half blacks and half Italian, 

 or a good share hybrid, would you ad- 

 vise a person to try to Italianize, sup- 

 pose hisbees were about half and half ? 



6. Where the bees of a neighborhood 

 are two-thirds black, and you want to 

 produce comb honey mostly, would it be 

 best to breed from your best black 

 queens, rather than to try to Italianize? 



7. Don't you think (of course the big 

 queen-breeders don't read this depart- 

 ment) that if the black bees had been 

 bred as scientifically, and as much care 

 and study given them as has been be- 

 stowed on the Italians, in the last 20 or 

 30 years, they would have been to-day 

 as good, if not better than the Italian ? 



Denison, Iowa. E. S. M. 



Answers. — 1. I have contracted down 

 to five, four, three, and in some cases 

 down to only one or two combs, having 

 no combs built in the brood-chamber. 

 A division-board or a dummy was next 

 to the comb or combs left, and the space 

 partly filled with dummies. One or two 

 years I filled in the vacant space with 

 hay. If two dummies were put in next 

 the brood-comb, with half an inch space 

 between them, there was no trouble 

 about combs being built in the vacant 

 space left. But please notice that there 

 was no queen in the hive. Without a 

 queen, bees don't seem so irttent on build- 

 ing comb, but with a queen you would 

 likely find them clustering in the open 

 space left beyond the two dummies, 

 there to build combs. 



With the queen left in the hive, as in 

 your case, you should have filled up the 

 vacant space in some way, so the bees 

 couldn't occupy it. If the space for the 

 brood-nest is limited, the tendency of 

 the bees is to build additional combs at 



the side, even if one or two dummies are 

 in the way. Perhaps it is not necessary 

 to have the dummies so close to each 

 other as you get farther away from the 

 brood-nest. At the farther side, next 

 the wall of the hive, the bees are not so 

 likely to commence building, even if the 

 space is an inch or more. 



I doubt if any one would advise you 

 to contract ail summer. I think con- 

 tractionists would tell you to hive a 

 swarm on five frames, then after those 

 five are well occupied, and the bees 

 working well in the supers, to add the 

 other frames. Some of them might per- 

 haps tell you to take out part of the 

 frames from an old colony, but I rather 

 think that now-a-days contraction is 

 mostly confined to swarms. I don't, 

 however, count myself the highest 

 authority on contraction, for after hav- 

 ing done a good deal in that line I have 

 gone back to the plan of allowing same 

 number of combs summer and winter. 



2. Yes, put an empty frame into the 

 middle of a brood-nest at a time when 

 there was any likelihood of swarming, 

 and I should expect a good share of the 

 comb built to be drone, especially if 

 there was no drone-comb in the other 

 frames. 



3. Bees having a young queen are not 

 so likely to swarm as those having an 

 old one, and rearing a queen in a hive 

 in the fall would not interfere with the 

 harvest as would rearing one before the 

 harvest. 



4. There might not be much dififer- 

 ence, only the later a queen is reared 

 this year, the younger she will be next, 

 and the less likely to swarm. 



5. Yes, I've done that very thing, and 

 I would keep on trying, for you will not 

 get through with the trying for a good 

 many years. 



6. No, I would do my best to work in 

 Italian blood. 



7. No, I hardly think so. Between 

 you and me, I don't think there has 

 been such an immense amount of sci- 

 ence squandered on the breeding of 

 Italian bees. Tiiey are what they are, 

 because of the surroundings in their 

 native habitat. While some have taken 

 great pains in breeding, I think a large 

 number to-day would say that an Italian 

 queen imported from Italy 30 years ago 

 was just as good as the average queen 

 in America to-day, and every year many 

 <iueens are imported from Italy and sold 

 at a high price, which would hardly be, 

 if there was no advantage in it. And I 

 don't know that any one claims that 

 any improvement has been made in 

 Italy, in the past 30 years. 



