122 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



August 



little honey in the surplus apartment, 

 much honey in the body of the hive 

 and few bees for winter, owing to the 

 honey in the brood combs crowding 

 out the brood which gave the bees for 

 winter. Seeing things as I believed in 

 their light, I next began figuring what 

 size hive was best. The queen I 

 found needed 800 square inches of 

 comb during the best of her breeding, 

 and as it was necessary that some room 

 be allowed for pollen and a little honey 

 for present uses, I suppose that one- 

 fourth the room occupied by the queen 

 would be about right for this, so set- 

 tled that 1,000 square inches of comb 

 would be about right. But as it was 

 impossible to have a certain number 

 of frames figure out an even 1,000, 1 

 took the number that gave me the 

 nearest that amount, which was nine. 

 Eight gave 820 square inches, while 

 nine gave 1,035. Not to go too hasty 

 I first made some dummies and re- 

 duced the size of the brood chamber 

 with these, using about one-third of 

 the hives 1 had in use in the experi- 

 ment. When fall came I found that 

 the hives thus treated gave fully one- 

 fourth more surplus honey than did 

 those still having the 12 frames, while 

 nearly every hive had fully honey 

 enough for winter. The next year I 

 used dummies in three-fourths of the 

 hives I had built, while the new ones 

 built held but nine frames. In strik- 

 ing an average that fall I found that 

 the few hives having twelve frames 

 gave only about two-thirds as much 

 surplus honey as did those having but 

 nine, so I hesitated no longer in de- 

 ciding that nine Gallup frames gave 

 plenty of room for the best results 

 when working for comb honey. As 



intimated above I arrived at this con- 

 clusion nearly twenty years ago and 

 have seen no reason for reversing the 

 same during all these years, in which 

 time I have experimented with hives 

 holding all the way from seven to six- 

 teen of these frames. When I first 

 began with the small hives my main 

 fear was that the bees would gener- 

 ally lack for stores for winter, but in 

 this I have been happily disappointed, 

 for if my memory serves me right, 

 three falls have been all that the bees 

 have been short of stores during that 

 time. — Doolittle in Review, (Borodino, 

 N. F.) 



MANAGING BEES — COMB HONEY AND PRE- 

 VENTION OF INCREASE BY SWARMING. 



As a producer of comb honey, I 

 have been asked to write for publica- 

 tion a description of the way I man- 

 age my bees to secure a honey crop 

 without increasing the original num- 

 ber of colonies. 



Before giving the plan in detail, I 

 will say that althogh I do not remem- 

 ber ever having seen it in print, still 

 it may not be entirely new to some ; 

 and I will say further, that it was not 

 the absolute prevention of swarming 

 I had in view when I began to exper- 

 iment along this line some years ago, 

 but to know what to do to accomplish 

 the best results when the bees did 

 swarm, which they are almost sure to 

 do sooner or later regardless of all that 

 has been said and done thus far to 

 prevent it. 



Neither do I find that bees of any 

 particular race or color — be it black, 

 yellow or grey — are entirely exempt 

 from swarming, when the colonies are 

 sufficiently strong in numbers, and the ' 

 honey-flow abundant. It is their nat- 



