1920 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



201 



sale prices, while in the bottled 

 form, through the ordinary trade 

 channels, the price must be from 30 

 to 40 or more cents a pound above 

 wholesale prices. 



I know these to be facts, as I have 

 this winter marketed my own crop 

 and what I could buy, totaling about 

 17,000 pounds in this manner, and 

 have reached but a few of the possi- 

 ble honey consumers, and at irregu- 

 lar intervals. 



Here is the field for co-operative 

 eflfort. 



New York. 



TurnbuU's Method of Shook 

 Swarming 



By F. Dundas Todd . 



After the first of May most colo- 

 nies in British Columbia are occupy- 

 ing two stories, mainly in 10-frame 

 bodies. The year 1919, from the be- 

 ginning of May to the end of August, 

 was very dry, and in most regions 

 was rather hard on the bees, but in 

 Mr. TurnbuU's locality there was a 

 steady building-up flow all season, 

 which may have much to do with the 

 success of his experiment. 



Discovering queen-cells one day. he 

 decided to make a shook swarm, but 

 having lots of spare combs, he won- 

 dered if it was possible to get a 

 young queen mated from the lower 

 half of a hive while the old queen oc- 

 cupied the upper half. He had previ- 

 ously tried the opposite, that is, mat- 

 ing the young queen from the upper 

 story, with rather poor success. 



His first step was to take three 

 frames of brood from the hive and 

 make a nucleus alongside, a queen- 

 cell being left on one of the frames. 

 This was intended for reserve if the 

 young queen on the old stand failed 

 to mate and start laying. Then on 

 the old stand in the lower story he 

 put all the remaining frames of brood 

 excepting one, filling up the space 

 with empty combs when necessary. 

 A queen-cell was also left on one of 

 the combs. Above this story he 

 placed an excluder, then a second 

 brood-chamber in which was the last 

 frame of brood with the old queen, 

 the seven combs or so left over, and 

 empty combs or frames of foundation 

 to fill. 



Each hive was left in this condition 

 until the start of the honey flow in 

 the beginning of July. The young 

 queens all mated and started egg- 

 laying. When the flow S'tarted such 

 old queens as he wished to save he 

 carried to a new stand with two 

 frames of brood and had them in 

 good shape for wintering by the end 

 of the honey flow, which in 1919 

 was. with him. unusually long. Where 

 he did not wish to save the old queen 

 he killed her and placed the excluder 

 above the second story instead of the 

 first. 



One colony handled in this fashion 

 gave a crop of 500 pounds, another 

 almost as much, while the average 

 from eight colonies in his home yard 

 was 300 pounds. 



At the Seattle meeting of the 

 Washington Beekeepers' Association 



Mr. Turnbull told of his experience, 

 to the intense interest of one of the 

 big honey producers who had experi- 

 mented along the same lines, but 

 with comi)lete failure as the result. 

 On comparing notes the one point of 

 divergence seemed to be the condi- 

 tion of the hive when the experiment 

 was begun. Mr. TurnbuU's colonies 

 invariably had developed the swarm- 

 ing fever, the others had not, so 

 never started queen-cells in the lower 

 story, or destroyed them when given. 



Mr. TurnbuU's great wealth of 

 oombs was the consequence of a 

 fierce siege of European foulbrood 

 he had undergone the previous year, 

 which had reduced his apiary by 75 

 per cent. In the lower Eraser coun- 

 try European foulbrood is no re- 

 specter of colonies, and attacks the 

 strong and the weak with equal im- 

 partiality. Today one may have colo- 

 nies covering twenty combs with 

 from ten to fourteen frames of brood. 

 A month later the brood will be rot- 

 ten all through the hives. There are 

 other e.xperiences equally as peculiar. 

 A good, careful beekeeper, with si.x 

 colonies, found them all affected, so 

 he dequeened at once and ordered 

 queens from a queen breeder to ar- 

 rive in three weeks. Two queens 

 were sent at once and he introduced 

 them, that being the tenth day after 

 dequeening. All disease was appar- 

 ently cleaned up, as it did not reap- 

 pear. The rest of the queens arrived 

 sixty days after dequeening, were in- 

 troduced, but three of the colonies 

 developed the disease. This experi- 

 ence seems to me to emphasize the 

 value of resistant stock. 



British Columbia. 



(This is just the reverse of the plan 

 described by Frank C. Pellett in the 

 October, 1917, A. B. J. His plan was 

 to mate the young queens in the up- 

 per story. While some correspond- 

 ents have reported good success by 

 that plan, others have reported fail- 

 ure. We will be glad to have further 

 reports on the plan of mating the 

 young queen in the lower hive-body 

 as practiced by Mr. Turnbull, who re- 

 ported success in every trial. 



The difference should be noted be- 

 tween the two methods. Turnbull did 

 not make the trial until the bees had 

 built queen-cells, while Pellett suc- 

 ceeded with colonies in normal condi- 

 tion and where no evidence of the 

 swarming fever had appeared. — Ed- 

 itor). 



The Honey Producer's Best Friend 



By Clifford F. Muth 



After reading Fred Huchting's ar- 

 ticle on "The (poor) Middleman," in 

 the .-Xpril issue of the American Bee 

 Journal, I feel like Mr. Hawkins at 

 the Buffalo convention^"Mad All 

 Over." 



Mr. Huchting refers to the prices 

 of pork before and after the packers 

 took hold of it. Let us suppose that 

 all the pork packers went out of 

 business and the farmer had to rely 

 upon killing and selling his hogs to 

 the consumer, a pound or two at a 

 time. To say the very least, the far- 



mer would get lots of experience and 

 overhead expense to boot. 



It is true that he may receive a few 

 cents per pound more by doing all 

 the work himself, but when all the 

 farmers sold the same way, there 

 would be a lot of throat cutting, be- 

 sides the hogs. 



The principle is the same with the 

 beekeepers and the honey packers. 

 One works for production and the 

 other for consumption. Either one 

 could do both to a certain extent, 

 and after that he would neglect one 

 or the other. 



You, Mr. Huchting, are very, very 

 much mistaken about the honey 

 packers. They are the ones who ad- 

 vertise and create the demand for 

 honey and hold up the price by out- 

 bidding each other. 



The next time you meet a honey 

 packer, shake his hand, for he is your 

 friend in need, and a friend indeed. 



Ohio. 



Imperfect Mating 



The article in the April Journal by 

 Prof. John Anderson on "Imperfect 

 Mating of Queens" seems to e.xplain 

 an unusual experience occurring at 

 my home yard this spring. 



In March, 1919, I removed all my 

 bees from the home yard to a gum 

 swamp one mile away, excepting a 

 good colony with breeding queen. My 

 idea was to have the queens purely 

 mated. In June this colony prepared 

 to swarm, so they were swarmed arti- 

 ficially, leaving the old queen, now 3 

 years old, at the original stand. The 

 swarm or colony No. 2 quickly built 

 up with a young queen and made two 

 supers of honey. Colony No. 1 made 

 only one super of honey, in Septem- 

 ber. 



An examination on March 3, 1920, 

 showed than colony No, 1 had no 

 brood, while No. 2 had eggs scattered 

 over several frames, and drone larvse 

 in worker cells. Thinking both colo- 

 nies to be queenless, they were given 

 frames of brood, but neither began 

 cells. An attempt was made to intro- 

 duce a queen into colony No. 1, with 

 failure. 



After a close examination on March 

 12 a young queen just beginning to 

 lay, was found in No. 1. An old queen 

 was found in No. 2. 



The eggs in colony No. 2 hatched 

 info drones only. The eggs laid by 

 the queen in colony No. 1 hatched into 

 drones and workers, but both of 

 meagre quantity for the time of the 

 year. These queens were promptly 

 removed, and both colonies began 

 queen cells. 



It sems that the queen in colony 

 No. 1 superseded the old queen late 

 in the fall of 1919. but began laying 

 late in the spring. No drones were 

 flying when she began to lay, March 

 12. 



My home yard is in a drained 

 swamp area with all the surrounding 

 forest removed, making the condi- 

 tions similar to those on an island. 



My bees wintered nicely with no 

 loss. They are mostly building up 

 strong, and in two stories. A few 

 colonies have a disease unknown to 



