46 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Bee Culture in Cottage Hives. 



No. 3. 



It has been alleged that whenever and at 

 whatever elevation our ordinary fruits — apples, 

 pears, peaches and cherries — can be cultivated 

 with profit in the open air, there also may bee- 

 culture be successfully prosecuted. This alle- 

 gation appears to be founded on facts, though, 

 from our own observation and the statements of 

 trustworthy writers, we may not assume that the 

 converse of the proposition, in so far as it would 

 apparently assign a limit to the range of bee cul- 

 ture, would be correct. Dietrich, a celebrated 

 German pomologist, assumes twelve hundred 

 feet above the limit of the ocean as the greatest 

 height at which fruit-culture can be made a 

 profitable pursuit. Yet we are acquainted with 

 numerous more elevated districts in which 

 though some few fruit trees are found, bee cul- 

 ture is prosecuted extensively, and swarms 

 which issued prior to the 15th of June, usually 

 lay up ample supplies for winter, and generally 

 yield a surplus. Moreover, the Rev. Sir. Ileu- 

 bel states, in a communication to the Bienen- 

 zeitung^ that in 1853 he saw at Braunsdorf, a 

 village in the Thuringian forest, situated nine- 

 teen hundred and four feet above the level of 

 the sea, an apiary of twelve hives, which pro- 

 duced a surplus of one hundred and eight pounds 

 of honey that year. Bees rarely swarm there, 

 and receive only ordinary attention from their 

 owners, as these have no knowledge of any im- 

 proved system of management. 



The elevated districts to which we have allud- 

 ed, are in themselves all poor honey regions, 

 though differing in degrees of productiveness; 

 and the results, we contend, show that even in 

 such districts where bees, left to their natural 

 resources, still succeed in accumulating some 

 surplus stores, intelligent bee-keepers may ren- 

 der bee culture profitable, though using only 

 the common cottage hive, for they can employ 

 means calculated to increase that surplus mate- 

 rially. 



These means are the following: 



First — by effecting a diminution of the quan- 

 tity of honey required for the support of bees 

 under ordinary peasant management. It is well 

 known that bees in their wild state in the for- 

 ests, suffer more from cold, and hence consume 

 more honey in winter, than they do when pro- 

 vided with comfortable hives and kept from 

 exposure to extremes of temperature in a shel- 

 tered location. Increased care and attention 

 in wintering bees will, consequently, diminish 

 the consumption of honey and increase the 

 available surplus. This, which is of great im- 

 l^ortance even in the best sections of "country, 

 will turn the scale between profit and loss in 

 all poor honey districts. 



The surplus thus secured may, in the second 

 place, be further increased by regularly adopt- 

 ing measures to suppress the production of 

 drones. Those who use the cottage hive, wheth- 

 er made of straw or wood, can largely secure 

 tlds desirable object by making their hives 

 broad and wide, whereby swarming will, in a 

 great measure, be prevented. Bees may be 



taught, or weaued from, a habit of swarming, 

 by the form of hive in which they are kept; 

 and when thej^ have little propensity to swarm, 

 they feel a corresponding!}' small disposition to 

 rear drones. Thus fewer drones are produced 

 in broad and wide (mammoth) hives than in 

 narrower and smaller ones, in which greater 

 warmth and want of room excite and maintain 

 the swarming impulse, Avith which droue-rear- 

 ing is inseparably connected — because in- 

 stinct teaches the bee that drones are indispen- 

 sable during the swarming season. Whenever 

 a change of queen occurs in a hive, whether in 

 the swarming season or not, it will in cottage 

 hives, in which it is always a natural process, 

 be attended by an increased production of 

 drones; and hence the use of broad and wide 

 hives, having a tendency to repress swarming, 

 counteracts this, and thus saves much honey — 

 for a great deal of it is expended upon them in 

 their larval state, and they are enormous consum- 

 ers thereof when mature. 



The suppression of the production of drones, 

 it is true, cannot, so long as pasturage abovmds, 

 be effectually accomplished in ordinary cottage 

 hives, as the drone combs cannot be removed, 

 except in part, by cutting, and these are usually 

 speedily replaced by similar combs. Recourse 

 must therefore be had to properly constructed 

 drone traps, to remove them as soon as possible 

 after they make their appearance. Various in- 

 genious devices have been employed for this 

 purpose, but most of them are objectionable, as 

 interfering too much with the ingress and egress 

 of the workers, or endangering the life of new- 

 ly reared queens. For this, among other rea- 

 sons, we prefer using the wider and larger 

 hives, in our practice, in which the bees have 

 less inducement for building drone comb, and 

 a drone trap is thus rendered in a great mea- 

 sure superfluous. 



A further means of securing profitable results 

 in the poorer honey districts consists in arrang- 

 ing to have your colonies populous Avhen the 

 full honey harvest opens. It is a well estab- 

 lished fact, though one not sufficientl}' regard- 

 ed, that a strong colony will gather from three 

 to ten times as much honey in a day, in a favor- 

 able season, than a small or weak one; and it is 

 equally certain that an intelligent apiarian has 

 it in his power to place his colonies in this con- 

 dition at the opening of the season. 



Long as we have cultivated bees, it has never 

 happened that, even in poor seasons, a strong 

 colony which was restrained from swarming, 

 failed to yield over a moderate supply of honey. 

 But with colonies which had been allowed to 

 swarm, and with young swarms, the case was 

 almost invariably the reverse, in such seasons; 

 and it has frequently happened that even first 

 swarms were then so reduced by the middle of 

 September, as to be on the verge of starvation. 

 At that time, though we had read and studied nu- 

 merous treatises on bee culture, we had literally 

 no practic^ol knowledge, and it was only by ex- 

 perience, often lamentable, and dear-bought, 

 that we came to understand how ruinous swarm- 

 ing proves to be in such districts. Exceptional 

 cases, indeed, occurred, but they were rare, 



