1873.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



43 



" Brood crowded out by honey — T?ie remedy. — 

 Mr. Adair's remedy is to put, between the brood 

 combs, some empty frames, in which the bees will 

 build and the queen will lay. This process is not 

 new, but it is bad. Nine times out of ten, the 

 bees being in a great hurry, will build drone 

 combs, as the queen will fill them with eggs, it 

 "will be worse than nothing at all. I do not 

 know if this drone-laying will destroy what Mr. 

 Adair calls the perfect balance of the colony, but I 

 know, from experiment, that the harvest will 

 thereby be diminished. 



Mr. Adair then tries to draw a conclusion from 

 all his theories, and to demonstrate the uncer- 

 tainty of former devices, and to prove that the 

 Adair hive alone produces the certainty of non- 

 swarming ; that it produces as much box-honey 

 as the other hives produce extracted honey ; that 

 it produces no drones, etc., etc. 



His hive is the best, for it has no space be- 

 tween the frames and the sides ; and last, but not 

 the least, we are all empirics ; he alone has the 

 true — the sole science of bee-keeping. But I 

 ■will cite, for fear of not being believed. 



His theory will show : " That what has been 

 called scientific bee -culture is founded on em- 

 piricism, having isolated facts, and many of them 

 false, for its basis : and, what has been called 

 system, is no system at all ; the Dzierzon theory, 

 upon which it is founded, being merely the dis- 

 covery of a series of facts that, while true in the 

 main, have been imperfectly understood, and 



attributed to wrong causes In the coarse of 



the investigations that have led me to the fore- 

 going conclusions, I have experimented with 

 every plausible hive that has been presented ; 

 and, finding none of them unobjectionable, I 

 attempted to construct a hive that would not do 

 violence to the nature and instincts of the bees. 

 The final result was the application of a neio 

 principle in their construction, which would do 

 away with the inconvenience of the Cook frame- 

 hive, with spaces around them, that had to be 

 filled up with bees, to maintain the colony in a 

 proper condition. This I accomplisbed with my 

 section bee- hive." (p. 12.) 



Friends! beekeepers, burn your hives, and 

 adopt the Adair hive ! As for me, I will be con- 

 tent with the hive that I have used for the past 

 eight years. I think it commodious, simple, easy 

 to manage and convenient for bees, for I have 

 never seen bees filling up the spaces around the 

 frames, to maintain the colony in a proper con- 

 dition, as Mr. Adair thinks it to be ; and I would 

 not trade it for another. It is simply the old 

 style of Quinby hive, enlarged to eleven frames. 

 I fill only eight or nine frames and put in two par- 

 tition boards, one on each side. The remaining 

 spaces in the sides are occupied by the young 

 bees, before they can act as honey gatherers, who 

 would otherwise cluster on the outside, or 

 remain in the hive, thus being in the way of the 

 working-bees. 



As soon as the harvest begins, the bees fill the 

 brood-chamber with honey, and the queen does 

 not find more room to deposit her eggs. If 

 things were left in such a state the colony would 

 swarm, but I place, in the side space, an empty 

 drone comb, and as soon as the bees bring honey 



into it I put on the honey-boxes or frames. The 

 result is that, for the last six or seven years, I 

 have had very few natural swarms. I do not 

 entirely prevent natural swarming, but I think I 

 prevent it as much as possible. 



This hive is a top opening hive. The frames do 

 not come together in any point. I could visit 

 two of my hives in the time that would be 

 necessary to open one Adair hive. I speak of it 

 knowingly. The Adair hive difters, only in a few 

 points, from the hive that Huber used for his 

 experiments three-fourths of a century ago ; be- 

 sides, Mr. Adair procured me an opportunity to 

 try his hive._ In April, 1869, he offered to send 

 me one of his hives. I accepted and received the 

 hive with the right to use it. I transferred a 

 colony into it immediately. The transferring, so 

 easy in frames seven-eighths broad, was difficult 

 on accountgof the breadth of the sections (one 

 inch and a half.) After a few days I opened the 

 hive again, to remove the ligatures ; but, when I 

 brought the sections together again I could not 

 close them without killing many bees — and 

 nothing grieves me so much as to destroy these 

 interesting insects. The section being one and a 

 half inches across, and coming in close contact 

 together all around, I dare Mr. Adair to replace 

 the sections of a strong colony withovit crushing 

 hundreds of bees. Then, when I returned the 

 box to its place, in the outer case, the bees, re- 

 turning from the fields, had spread in this outer 

 case ; many more were crushed, and some would 

 not go out at all. I had to brush them out. I 

 supposed that after I would become used to 

 handling this hive I would be more skillful, but 

 it was always the same thing. At last one day 

 I perceived that, in the preceding visit, I had 

 crushed the queen between two sections, and I 

 made up my mind to transfer the colony into 

 another hive. This Adair hive is still in my 

 apiary. I use it, not as a hive, but as a tool-box. 

 I should add, however, that since that time I 

 have used the Adair section honey-boxes for 

 surplus honey. They are not handy for the 

 extractor, but they sell very readily whenever 

 the combs are built straight in them. 



Ch. Dadant. 



Hamilton, III., April, 1873. 



Keports, Experiences, Etc. 



John. A. Gunther, of Milwaukee, informs us 

 that the yield at date of July 4, from a swarm 

 bought May 9, has been four swarms and twenty- 

 eight pounds of extract honey. 



W. D. Wright, of Knowlesville, Albany Co., 

 N. Y., writes July 8, 1873: 



Bees are doing splendidly here, this season. 

 Honey has been very abundant since the first 

 of June. 



S. Rowell, Minnesota, writes July, 1873 : 

 Bees doing first-rate on basswood ; have taken 

 400 pounds of honey from eight swarms and 

 their increase up to date, July 20 ; hives full, 

 ready for the extractor again to-morrow. 



