THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



183 



One would take it as a matter of course, 

 from the exuberent language of the edi- 

 tor, that the remarkable success of the 

 "double-deckers" was owing mainly to 

 the extra number of stories, but were the 

 extra stories the cause or the effect? In 

 another paragraph the editor remarks, as 

 if almost alone in the opinion, "Our 

 own readers know what a leaning I have 

 toward large colonies, and how I have 

 more than once said, that in our experi- 

 ence at least they would get more honey 

 both [either?] comb and [or?] extracted, 

 than smaller ones." Well, the editor has 

 all Michigan with him, however it may 

 be in non-contracting Ohio. He contin- 

 ues: "But I cannot see that these results 

 are necessarily attril)utable to a large 

 frame or to a large hive rather than to 

 an equally large hive made up of one or 

 more stories. According to my notion it 

 is not the size of the brood-frame or the 

 size of the hive so much as it is the nu- 

 merical strength of the bees themselves. '' 

 Exactly! It is evident that the editor 

 would have us believe that in some oc- 

 cult way those extra stories add to the 

 numerical strength of the colonies. Let 

 us see. To keep eight L. frames full of 

 brood there must be 2,500 eggs deposited 

 daily, continuously. That means a heavy 

 swarm every two weeks. Not one queen 

 in a hundred will do that previous to the 

 height of the clover and bass wood season. 

 To keep ten I,, frames full of brood the 

 (lueen must lay more than 3,000 eggs 

 daily, continuously. A heavy swarm 

 every eleven days. Not one queen in a 

 thousand will do that previous to the 

 time when such great numbers would l)e- 

 come worse than useless. It i.s no 

 answer to say a good queen will put 

 bi"ood in 15 or 20 frames. A frame filled 

 one-third full of brood, as it is usually put 

 in, looks pretty large. So the extra stories 

 cannot be needed to obtain numerical 

 strength. Then the editor makes the 

 almost unpardonable mistake of con- 

 founding large colonies and large hives. 

 He says some of our most successful bee- 

 keepers "use large colonies;" and then 



goes on to name soniQ who use "double- 

 deckers," or large Ouinby's. Is it possi- 

 ble he thinks Michigan bee-keepers ob- 

 ject to "large colonies" and that they 

 wouldn't use a larger hive if they thought 

 it would materially increase the "nu- 

 merical strength ?" But he says the colo- 

 nies in the two and three story hives 

 don't swarm. Well, how does he know? 

 How long has he tried them ? Doolittle 

 in the Progressive, page 19, gives answer 

 to some one who had found out how to 

 prevent swarming: The main cause lay in 

 the season. In '77 I had little swarming 

 with colonies all strong in the spring; 

 while, another year 49 colonies in the 

 spring gave j/cV sicarms! That is a good 

 answer; and here is another: The plan of 

 tiering up brood chambers is practically 

 the management for extracting; and it is a 

 common place fact that swarming is easi- 

 ly' controlled with that management. The 

 editor no doubt will protest that the plan 

 works equally well for comb honey. He 

 says. Gleanings 140, "after the bees have 

 pretty well filled up the upper story* * * 

 I may remove the upper story crowd all 

 the brood as far as possible into the low- 

 er story and put two supers of comb hon- 

 ey (sic) on in its stead." So, after all, 

 though the editor tries to cut loose from 

 the contraction fad he finds it necessary 

 to practice it in order to produce comb 

 honey, only he practices a laborious and 

 inconvenient method. How much better 

 it would be to have the brood in so com- 

 pact a shape that it could all be put into 

 the lower story; or, better still, to have 

 had W-Produced in the lower story, and 

 not require any handling at all. How 

 much better, too, would it have been to 

 have had on one or two comb honey supers 

 to prevent swarming and to catch the in- 

 coming honey instead of using brood 

 comb , for this jnirpose. This contraction 

 practiced by the editor is equal in extent 

 to that practiced previous to swamiing 

 by any Michigan bee-keeper, so far 

 as I know, and I am not inclined to 

 be captious about methods with one who 

 is right at heart. 



