568 



June 27, 1907 



American ^ae Journal 



every possible condition, so that even 

 the man of very limited experience 

 may succeed, and such work is the 

 finest kind of education for the begin- 

 ner — it is a whole lot better than pay- 

 ing out money for foundation. As one 

 gains experience, and his judgment is 

 sharpened, he can vary from the rule 

 because he will know when to do, or 

 not to do, this or that. It would make 

 this description very long and tedious 

 to go into all the details to explain 

 minutely the effect of variations in 

 temperature, honey -flow, changing pro- 

 portion of fieldera to nurses, etc. 



Now when the colony has built 4 or 

 5 new combs, you have just about 

 reached the limit ; after that the queen 

 will begin to want drone-comb to lay 

 in. Whenever a colony has reached 

 the time they are about to occupy the 

 entire 7 to 10 combs, they instinctively 

 prepare for increase by the rearing of 

 drones, but up to the time they have 

 occupied about 6 combs it is worker- 

 comb they want and will build. With 

 old queens they will build less, and 

 other conditions affect results, too. 



Getting Surplus Honey from Weak 

 Colonies. 



These comb - building colonies — 

 whether from weak colonies that were 

 late in getting started in the spring 

 (for such can be made use of in getting 

 comb built) or from nuclei — will some- 

 times store quite a little surplus, par- 

 ticularly if extracted honey be pro- 

 duced. The drone-combs used can be 

 removed and their places filled with 

 ready-made worker-combs. These re- 

 moved drone-combs may be extracted 

 at the time of removal, or an excluder 

 may be put over the brood-chamber 

 and an extra body put above, and these 

 combs put into it and the rest of the 

 space filled with either starters or other 

 comb, or parts of comb of either drone 

 or worker. The best way is to put 

 these removed drone-combs in the cen- 

 ter and fill out the sides. If starters 

 be used there will of course be lots of 

 drone-comb built, but the excluder 

 keeps the queen from them, and noth- 

 ing is lost. A lot of new drone or 

 worker comb can be sold as chunk 

 honey, or it may be extracted to be 

 used over again, or may be broken 

 fine and strained ; or, what is the bet- 

 ter way, is to melt it, and so sep- 

 arate the wax from the honey. Each 

 100 pounds of new combs melted when 

 full of honey, will yield about $1 worth 

 of wax. It pays to do it. 



There is no cheaper or easier way to 

 produ-e extracted honey on a small 

 scale than the above, or some modifi- 

 cation or variation of the plan. Honey 

 strained or melted out from these new 

 combs is every whit the equal of that 

 extracted by the centrifugal extractor ; 

 and if well done, that melted out is the 

 finer product of the three methods. 

 Honey separated from the comb by 

 heat, when well done, can not be 

 equaled for body and fine flavor ; it is 

 simple XXX. 



The honey-producer who is getting 

 up No. 1 and fancy comb honey for the 

 general trade these days must be an 

 expert, and as I have previously indi- 

 cated in former articles of this series 

 the conditions that are required for obi 



taiuing the desired result, to a more or 

 less extent, damage the future pros- 

 perity of the colony, especially for 

 withstanding the following winter. It 

 is better to specialize ; but with some 

 such method as indicated above one 

 may produce extracted, and that with 

 no particular skill as an apiarist, and 

 get as good returns from the bees and 

 leave them in better condition. Would- 

 be apiarists with modern hives trying 

 to run a machine and system they do 

 not understand, nor have yet become 

 even half-way bee-masters, usually 

 soon "blow up the boiler," and thou- 

 sands of us, with years of practise, do 

 likewise. 



The divisible hive — that is, what is 

 known as the divisible shallow-frame 

 brood-chamber hive, as the Heddon 

 idea — is not understood by one in a 

 thousand of our best apiarists, and has 

 met with failure in the hands of many 

 who have tried them. _ The hive is dif- 

 ferent from what we have been accus- 

 tomed to, and must have its own meth- 

 ods to succeed. Lack of understand- 

 ing and proper method has caused the 

 failure, and not because of shallow 

 frame and divisible brood-chamber. 

 This reference to that hive and system 

 here is merely to point out a fact, and 

 not to discuss the merits of the hive 



and its system. If one is beginning 

 anew, such a hive and its system might 

 well be adopted, but I am here trying 

 to teach the simplest and best methods 

 with the hive in common use. 



No, no, we can not become experts 

 from the start ; it is well for us to 

 learn some of the details of the whys 

 for many things, as I have here indi- 

 cated. When we know from both the- 

 ory and practise what bees will do, and 

 the why of it, then it is time to under- 

 take the business as a business for 

 profit, and in a general commercial 

 way. I believe the man who allows 

 his bees to swarm as they will, follow- 

 ing their own instincts ; the man who 

 believes and advocates the let-alone 

 plan, and hives swarms, and puts on 

 supers, and shifts hives around a few 

 times, as the sum of his management, 

 is by no means an expert nor a mas- 

 ter. Get to the internal workings, and 

 know why this and that is done by the 

 bees, and do not trust to their wisdom ; 

 learn that the bee is not half as wise 

 as she gets credit for being. There is 

 reason for the things she does ; but 

 her doing is not prompted by any proc- 

 ess of reasoning, taking into considera- 

 tion cause and effect. That is the 

 master's part. 



Loveland, Colo. 



Conducted bj Emma M. Wilson, Marengo, 111. 



Making Increase from One Colony 



Dear Miss Wilson :— I have a colony of 

 Italian bees having a queen with clipped 

 wings. What can I do to make increase pos- 

 sible from the colony? I have read a good 

 deal about "shalie swarming,'' taking out 

 brood-combs, etc., bu I all of these methods 

 seem to lack details in the telling that makes 

 the operation doubtful of success for the 

 novice. 



In transferring brood-comb to another 

 hive, what of the queen — where does the 

 queen come in? 



Would buying a queen, and introducing 

 her to a nucleus of 3 or 3 frames of brood- 

 comb with adhering bees, be the right way to 

 do? or would it be better to move brood- 

 combs with bees and queen, and allow the re- 

 maining bees to build queen-cells and hatch a 

 new queen? Mrs. J. D. Black. 



Albion, Ind., June 5. 



You can increase with a clipped 

 queen in any way you could if the 

 queen were not clipped. In fact, it is 

 easier when thequeen is clipped, if you 

 increase by natural swarming. When 

 the colony swarms, instead of bother- 

 ing to hive the swarm, perhaps climb- 

 ing a tree to get it down, you pay no 

 attention to the swarm. Just watch 

 for the queen, and if you don't see her 

 as she comes out of the hive you'll be 

 likely to see her on the ground after 

 the swarm is up in the air. Pick her 

 up and put her in a cage. If you have 



no cage you can put a tumbler over her 

 on a plate, but be sure not to set the 

 plate in the sun unless you want to 

 kill the queen. Set the old -hive a yard 

 or more away, put the new hive in its 

 place, and then sit down comfortably 

 and congratulate yourself that you 

 don't have to climb for that swarm, 

 which may be clustered away up high. 

 Don't worry if it doesn't come back for 

 10 or 15 minutes ; it will not fail to 

 come back. Generally, however, it 

 will not settle at all, but sail around id 

 the air for a little while and then come 

 straight to the new hive you have set 

 on the old stand. When the bees have 

 started into the hive, let out thequeen 

 to travel in with them — and there you 

 are. About the easiest way to increase, 

 if you have no objection to natural 

 swarming. After the swarm has gone 

 into the hive, set the old hive close be- 

 side it, and a week later move the old 

 hive to a new place 2 yards or more 

 away. 



In transferring brood-combs to an- 

 other hive, if you mean transferring 

 from a boxhive to a movable-frame 

 hive, you merely get all the bees from 

 the box-hive into the new hive, and 

 the queen will be among them, although 

 you are not likely to see her. 



You will get along faster if you buy 

 the queen. In that case, it will be well 



