Jan. 3, 1907 



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How Many Colonies to Be- 

 come Well-to-Do? 



BY C. P. DAD A NT. 



On page 880, (1906), Mr. Doolittle 

 asks, "How many colonies should we 

 keep to become well-to-do?" and re- 

 quests an answer from Dr. Miller, 

 Hutchinson, myself, or others. On page 

 964, (1906), H. H. Moe reminds us of 

 this question, and gives his views. 



It is quite a long time since I 

 "sparred" with Mr. Doolittle, I am 

 not one of the "sparring" kind, unless 

 I can see some gross error to redress, 

 and the present subject is too indefinite 

 to give any one a fair chance for dis- 

 cussion. 



Perhaps the best thing I can do to 

 answer the question is to cite my own 

 experience. Mr. Moe says that each of 

 us has what he calls a "prop" in addi- 

 tion to the bees, to keep us going. In 

 the early '70's I had no such prop. It 

 is true, we were rearing queens, and 

 selling a few. But is not this legitimate 

 bee-keeping? Must the bee-keeper sell 

 only honey? Is not the sale of colo- 

 nies or queens a legitimate part of bee- 

 culture? For a number of years, I had 

 nothing else. I can remember several 

 seasons when we harvested from 40,000 

 to 50,000 pounds of honey. How many 

 colonies did we keep? From 150 to 600. 

 The manufacture and sale of comb 

 foundation was just an accident — a re- 

 sult of conditions. We had bought a 

 mill to make up our own wa.x, and it 

 turned out that we could work our 

 neighbors' wax and give them better 

 satisfaction than any other, and so the 

 business was built. But bee-keeping as 

 a business was my principal ooccupation 

 for some 15 years, and as I have al- 

 ready said, in the American Bee Jour- 

 nal, there was a time, when, if any one 

 else had been entrusted with the care 

 of any of our apiaries, I would have 

 expected those bees to be entirely ruined. 

 I got bravely over this notion quite 

 a while ago. 



How many colonies must we keep to 

 become well-to-do? Why, it depends 

 upon the apiarist, on the location, on 

 the metliods followed, on our greater 

 or less ability to manage our affairs, etc. 

 It takes a less number of colonies, when 

 running for comb honey, than when 

 producing extracted honey ; but those 

 colonies require more care. It takes less 

 bees in a good locality than in a poor 

 one, and yet the bee-keeper is more 

 likely to keep many bees in a good lo- 

 cality than in a poor one. Locality is 

 certainly a very important matter in se- 

 curing a well-to-do occupation. In the 

 alfalfa plains of Colorado, among the 



mesquite brush of Texas, in the sage- 

 covcrcd hills of California, the bee-keep- 

 er will keep just as many colonies as 

 he can care for, and will become well- 

 to-do, if he exercises judgment. But 

 how many colonies can he keep? That 

 depends entirely upon his skill, his am- 

 bition, his wit, his health. 



I have seen bee-keepers who would 

 spend two hours in overhauling half a 

 dozen colonies, and I have seen others 

 who could tell you the condition of 25 

 hives in the same length of time. Yet 

 the slow man might succeed as well as 

 the quick man, if his needs were no 

 greater than his speed. Let two men 

 start in bee-keeping in this State. Let 

 one of them be located among the corn- 

 fields, the w-heat and timothy fields, and 

 let the other be in close proximity to a 

 large dairy farm with a hundred acres 

 of pasture in which clover abounds. Do 

 you not see that the latter will have 

 a much better opportunity, all other 

 things being equal, to become well-to-do, 

 than his less fortunate brother? 



But take two men in similar locations. 

 Let one of them watch his loo colonies 

 daih', supply their needs as soon as dis- 

 covered, replace worthless queens, keep 

 out worthless drones, attend to all de- 

 tails minutely; and let the other keep 

 three times as many bees, and pay but 

 little attention to them, and the latter 

 is as likely as the former to succeed — 

 probably more likely. 



I think I have said enough to show 

 that it is impossible to give a stated 

 number of colonies of bees as either re- 

 quired or sutificient to render their owner 

 well-to-do. So I throw the question 

 back for Mr. Doolittle to answer, though 

 I feel certain that his reply will be very 

 similar to mine. 



But should we encourage or discour- 

 age bee-culture? I do not think we 

 have the choice. We are writing for 

 bee-papers. The readers are keepers of 

 bees, and they are entitled to know 

 from those who endeavor to teach them, 

 their very best thoughts, their most ex- 

 perienced recommendations. I have 

 read complaints from people who think 

 there are too many bee-keepers, and 

 who would make it a crime for any one 

 to encourage beginners. Those persons 

 woidd make a failure in any avocation. 

 If we were to believe them, there are 

 too many doctors, too many lawyers, too 

 many mechanics, too many farmers. But 

 this is not true. There are not too 

 many farmers as long as there is an 

 acre of land that remains uncultivated. 

 There are not too many bee-keepers as 

 long as honey is wasting for want of 

 harvesting bees. There are drawbacks, 

 bad seasons, in every pursuit, but wheth- 

 er we are farming, or keeping bees. 



let us try to follow the best methods, 

 and Ik- ready to take advantage of the 

 bountiful harvest when it comes. We 

 have just gone through a bad season; 

 that is the lime to make ready for good 

 crops. Alter the years of famine come 

 the years of plenty. 



The question as I see it is not. How 

 many colonies of bees shall we keep? 

 but. How can we make the best success 

 with the bees that we do keep? 



Hamilton, 111. 



Good Season -Methods of 

 Making Increase 



BY F. L. DAY. 



The season of 1906 was a fairly good 

 one in this locality in spite of the fact 

 that basswood, which is usually our 

 chief source of surplus, was almost a 

 total failure. A late frost appeared to 

 kill most of the buds so that only a 

 few trees blossomed. White clover, on 

 the other hand, was unusually abundant 

 and yielded well. 



My 28 colonies were increased to 43 

 full ones, besides 4 queen-rearing nuclei. 

 I secured 2,600 pounds of honey, all but 

 80 pounds being extracted. For the nu- 

 clei, I used regular lo-frame hives with 

 a partition in the middle, thus leaving 

 room for 4 frames on one side and 5 

 on the other. My idea was to take one 

 frame of brood with adhering bees and 

 the queen from each of these nuclei and 

 put in any colony where needed. This 

 was the theory, but in practice I got 

 only a very lew laying queens from 

 these nuclei during the whole season ; 

 but by placing choice queen-cells in West 

 cell-protectors, with the spiral cage at- 

 tached, and then hanging these between 

 the frames of the 4 nuclei, I secured 

 plenty of fine virgin queens. These were 

 then introduced wherever needed, with 

 fair success. 



In making my increase of 15 colo- 

 nies, I used both the nucleus and Alex- 

 ander plans. From 5 colonies using 

 the nucleus plan I secured II new colo- 

 nies and 515 pounds of honey. Four 

 colonies run by the Alexander plan gave 

 me 4 new colonies and 475 pounds of 

 honey. The nucleus plan gave me 220 

 per cent increase and 103 pounds of 

 honey per colony. The Alexander plan 

 gave only lOO per cent increase and 118 

 pounds of honey per colony. 



The 4 queen-rearing nuclei were made 

 from one of the 5 colonies used for 

 increase. They w'ould probably have pro- 

 duced enough honey if used for that 

 purpose, to have made the 5 original 

 colonies produce as high an average as 

 the 4 w^orked on the Alexander plan. 

 This makes the two plans about equal 

 for honey-production, with the nucleus 

 plan giving over double the increase that 

 the Alexander plan did. Had we had 

 our usual amount of basswood honey, 

 the nucleus plan would have been far 

 ahead in honey-production as well as 

 increase, just as it w-as.last year. 



The Alexander plan undoubtedly has 

 merit, but in this locality the lower 

 story left on the old stand almost always 

 becomes a most persistent swarmer, even 

 though the upper story be removed 5 or 

 6 davs after the preparations of the 



