784 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



it may be that a bee which reaches the 

 honey-gathering age after the main 

 flow, will gather all it can eat during its 

 majority, and pay its board-bill as a 

 larva besides. What it gathers will not 

 appear in the super; but contraction 

 would not have caused any more to ap- 

 pear above. I suspect there are fewer 

 localities of abundance followed by 

 dearth than the contractionists would 

 have us believe. In fact, such cannot 

 be the case in at least some instances ; 

 for it is a peculiarity of Nature that ex- 

 tremes do not exist without intermediate 

 stages. But they are silent on this 

 point. If no appreciable amount goes 

 into the supers except during the main 

 flow,they unhesitatingly say " contract." 

 (Contraction of swarms is a different 

 matter, and, I believe, is always benefi- 

 cial, except at the close of a flow). Be- 

 sides being of no benefit in such places, 

 contraction would cause us to lose the 

 other advantages of constantly strong 

 colonies, such as perfect immunity from 

 robbing and moths, readiness for winter 

 without any uniting, etc. 



But that is not the only point left ob- 

 scure. There are reasons for suppos- 

 ing that if a bee does not pay its board 

 in honey, it may in other currency. Con- 

 tractionists imply by their silence, even 

 if they do not think so, that only bees 

 of the honey-gathering age contribute 

 to the storing of surplus. Now it's very 

 nice to have such clean-cut principles to 

 go by, if they are only true ; but they 

 are not. We are told that the old bees 

 hand over their load to the young ones, 

 and do not themselves deposit it in the 

 cells. If so, it is reasonable to suppose 

 that they do not dawdle around and 

 superintend the operation, but go back 

 for more. If that is the case, they can 

 make more trips in a day, and bring in 

 more honey, than when the number of 

 home-staying bees is for any reason 

 diminished. 



We are also told that, at night, old 

 and young devote themselves to evapo- 

 rating the nectar by rolling each portion 

 around on their, tongues, and exposing 

 it to the air. This reduces its bulk, and 

 makes more room for the next day's 

 gather. Otherwise comb-building would 

 have to proceed at a much faster ratio 

 than it does, or can. Now diminish the 

 number of bees attending to this labor ; 

 will not th^^ "input" honey also be ' 

 diminished, for the same reason that 

 colonies run for comb honey produce 

 less than those run for extracted ? 

 There is less room to deposit loads; they 

 have to wait to make it. Moreover, it is 

 the home-staying bees that are best 



adapted to the comb-building, which is 

 necessary. 



I suppose the contractionists will ad- 

 mit that there should be some young 

 bees during a flow. But how do they 

 know the right proportion ? Perhaps 

 the bees can attend to that as well as we 

 can. All these latter considerations, it 

 is true, have more influence the longer 

 the flow ; but they must have some 

 weight in the shortest kind of a flow. 



LAKGE AND SMALL HIVES. 



In considering the subject of large and 

 small hives, also, the puzzled theorizer 

 finds that the matter is settled by refer- 

 ence to certain obvious advantages, 

 while principles which may have con- 

 siderable weight are not even alluded to, 

 apparently by reason of their obscurity. 

 Thus it is certain, though the fecundity 

 of the queen is an important factor, and 

 exceptions may occur, that in general 

 bees are influenced in increase by the 

 amount of food to fall back on. But 

 because that influence cannot possibly 

 be singly estimated or experimented on, 

 while the results of 'manipulation on 

 small hives are immediate and patent, 

 the former is opposed, and the latter 

 recommeded. 



How many of our small-hive advocates, 

 I wonder, have had 10 or 20 large 

 hives in their yard from year to year, 

 given them the different care which 

 they demand, and made an accurate 

 comparison of their results with those of 

 the small hives '? If one course is right, 

 it does not follow, in this case, that the 

 other is wrong — unless proved so by 

 actual results. But that has not been 

 done. 



The science of large hives has been 

 neglected. If the same amount of study 

 and experiment had been bestowed on 

 them which the small hives have re- 

 ceived, who, at present, even of the men 

 who have produced comb honey by the 

 ton, is prepared to absolutely assert that 

 the yield would not have been the same, 

 even in proportion to the number of 

 combs ? It is possible that the reason 

 the plan has not been more generally 

 tried is that we are creatures of habit 

 and imitation, not because it is inferior. 



The cry is for more bees and less 

 manipulation. But do we really knoio 

 that the same number of colonies, with 

 less and different manipulation, would 

 not produce as much per comb? When- 

 ever I see an argument to that effect, I 

 invariably find it to be theoretical, 

 whether the writer is a practical man or 

 not. Owing to the success of manipula- 



