1921 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



269 



than that of the retail merchant. I 

 am speaking of averages. 



The consuming public get their 

 honey at a lower price from the 

 house-to-house honey) peddler than 

 the same thing can be secured from 

 the average grocer. The reason for 

 this is that the vender generally uses 

 the kind of containers that the grocer 

 would not accept. Then, again, the 

 housewife who buys from the grocer 

 a tiny glass of honey and pays per- 

 haps 25 cents, will take two or three 

 times as much honey from the honey 

 peddler at a less price. The honey 

 peddler centralizes his energy upon 

 the one item — honey — and usually, if 

 he makes a sale at all, it is more 

 than Mrs. Housewife buys from her 

 grocer. 



I have found that the great trouble 

 is, there are not enough peddlers. 

 Moreover, there is a decided" scarcity 

 of good honey peddlers. Men who 

 have salesmanship to any great de- 

 gree generally get into somethmg 

 more lucrative than the peddling of 

 honey. It is an exceedingly interest- 

 ing line, just the same. Really, it's a 

 pity that more men do not avail them- 

 selves of the opportunity offered in 

 the sale of extracted honey from 

 house to house. 



It's a burning shame that the pub- 

 lic is so ignorant of honey. 



Many still believe that honey is 

 manufactured to some degree. 



If ever a commodity needed adver- 

 tising , it is honey; yet it is the most 

 difficult food product to bring to the 

 attention of the American public. 



The Chinese herb doctors, so gen- 

 erally knowai in the west, use a great 

 deal of honey in compounding their 

 herbs, of which they make claim to 

 numerous cure-alls. Whether or not 

 there are any real cures in their con- 

 coctions, these Oriental medicine men 

 seem to think so. 



Anybody with a little business sense 

 can get into the honey business, at 

 least in a small way.A good way is to 

 select some place on the highway 

 where motorists are passing. It's in 

 the average person to want to buy 

 any food product in the country. They 

 like to do it. Simply put honey up in 

 jars, bottles or pails and stick up a 

 sign with the word "HONEY" on it, 

 and you will find people will stop and 

 be glad to purchase. It is well to se- 

 lect some wide portion of the high- 

 way, so that parties who stop to pur- 

 chase do not block the way. 



One man I know, who has sold 

 honey for years, and who is a suc- 

 cess as a vender, has one kind of 

 dark honey that he sells as "wild 

 honey." He has a class of trade who 

 want to buy the wild product, and he 

 does his best to satisfy them. 

 Whether or not this is a wise thing to 

 do, I cannot say; however, all honey 

 is more or less wild, so to speak. 



As honey seeks a lower market 

 level than it has during the last few 

 years, the sales will increase, beyond 

 doubt; yet we must all bear in mind 

 that every little bit of advertising we 

 can give any honey is good propa- 

 ganda. 



And do not begrudge the other fel- 



low a profit, for, as Mr. Wesley Fos- 

 ter says, "The honey peddler is do- 

 ing a missionary work." 

 California. 



ECONOMY IN THE PRODUCTION 

 OF QUEENS 



Part III. — A Stock Hive for Support- 

 ing Baby Nuclei 



By George D. Shafer 

 For years Mr. Wing mated queens 

 from twin nuclei made by separating 

 the standard 8-frame hive into two 

 equal parts by a tight lengthwise di- 

 vision board, using two or three Hoflf- 

 man frames in each nucleus. He tried 

 smaller frames, too, however, and 

 gradually began to gain experience 

 with baby nuclei. 



In "Simplified Queen Rearing" Mr. 

 Pratt has a paragraph in which he 

 mentions special chambers (holding 

 sixteen small combs stocked with a 

 full colony and used "for the purpo.se 

 of securing brood and honey in small 

 frames." Following the suggestion 

 made there, Mr. Wing tried out a 

 similar hive, and he has developed 

 its use to the point of making it a 

 very essential factor in the successful 

 maintenance and manipulation of 

 baby nuclei throughout the season. 

 This stock hive is made up of units or 

 bodies each 18% inches long, by 

 8Vi inches wide by 6% inches high, 

 inside. They are open at top and 

 bottom so that they may be tiered 

 up like the ordinary hives of today. 

 Separate top and bottom boards are 

 provided, and the entrance is at one 

 end. The small frames for brood 

 and honey are suspended crosswise of 

 the length of the hive, and supported 

 in the usual way by tin rah bets set 

 into the top sides of the hive body, a 

 one-fourth inch bee space being left 

 above and at the ends of the frames. 

 The top bars, sides and bottoms of the 

 frames are made of the same size 

 wooden strips, viz. : one-fourth inch 

 thick by three-fourths of an inch 

 wide. Each hive unit will hold 17 

 frames properly spaced. The length 

 of the top bar of the frames is 9 Vs 

 inches, so that they may be used di- 

 rectly in the baby nuclei twin mating' 

 boxes described by Pratt in "Simpli- 

 fied Queen Rearing," and supplied for 

 the past several years by dealers in 

 bee supplies. Instead of the separa- 

 ble wood and fiber covers supplied 

 with the older boxes, however, Mr. 

 Wing prefers a box equipped with a 

 light, double wooden cover made to 

 handle all in one piece. The usual 

 enamel cloth, over the twin box, 

 tacked to the top edge of the division 

 board, is used under this wooden 

 cover. 



The advantage of the stock hive lies 

 in the ease with which transfers may 

 be made between it and the nucleus 

 boxes and vice versa. Strong colo- 

 nies are kept in the stock hives and 

 two, three or four of the long bodies 

 are tiered up as needed to accommo- 

 date the colony. Quite strong colo- 

 nies are needed, of course, for draw- 

 ing out the new combs and filling 



them with honey, and for supplying a 

 large amount of brood through the 

 season. During a light honey flow, 

 when the little cluster of bees in the 

 baby nucleus cannot gather enough 

 food for its own use, the stock hive 

 will still be storing a surplus, and this 

 surplus may be drawn on at any time 

 to supply the nucleus with stores, 

 frame for frame being exchanged. 

 Thus the feeding of syrup in the nu- 

 cleus may usually be avoided by this 

 plan, so that time is saved and danger 

 from robbing is reduced to a mini- 

 mum. If feeding of syrup should be- 

 come necessary, it is much safer to 

 feed the strong colony in the stock 

 hive, and then give the filled or 

 partly filled combs to the nuclei. 



But a further and even greater ad- 

 vantage of the stock hive comes about 

 from the fact that it always contains 

 abundance of brood for easy inter- 

 change with the baby nuclei during 

 the queen rearing season. It often 

 happens that a nucleus becomes weak 

 in bees — a frame of hatching brood 

 from the stock hive will quickly re- 

 cruit it. Furthermore, if a virgin is 

 lost on her mating flight (or in any 

 other way) all brood in the nucleus 

 may become sealed or even emerge 

 before the next virgin, accepted by 

 this particular nucleus, is ready to 

 make her mating flight, and in that 

 case practically all the bees in the 

 little colony may sometimes swarm 

 out with the virgin as she leaves the 

 mating box. This causes confusion 

 and may break up the nucleus. Prac- 

 tically all such trouble may be avoid- 

 ed by supplying any such nucleus that 

 may need it with young brood from 

 the stock hive at tlie time a virgin or 

 ripe queen cell is given. This young 

 brood will hold the attention of the 

 bees in the little nucleus when the 

 virgin leaves on her mating flight. 



It must be noted that the "swarm- 

 ing out" of a baby nucleus with a 

 virgin does not correspond in any 

 way to "swarming out with a laying 

 queen," which is prone to happen in 

 case of baby nuclei during a honey 

 flow, when the newly mated queen 

 quickly fills the little frames with 

 eggs. Swarming out in the latter 

 case can be prevented only by re- 

 moving the young queen as soon as 

 she be.gins to lay, or by confining her 

 with a queen excluder for a few 

 days until she may be sold or used 

 othei-wise. 



The stock hive, therefore, as the 

 name implies, is the stock or store- 

 house , or mother colony — ready at 

 any time to supply all the wants (out- 

 side of virgins or ripe queen cells) of 

 a number of baby nuclei. Such a 

 hive will support 15 to 2.5 baby nu- 

 clei, according to the strength of the 

 colony and the character of the honey 

 flow; and it certainly makes for suc- 

 cess in the management of baby nu- 

 clei for economic queen production. 



A study of the various methods of 

 queen rearing, found in literature on 

 beekeeping, shows that in every case 

 an attempt has been made either to 

 imitate, with more or less success in 

 an economic way, the situations and 

 accompanying conditions that normal- 

 ly lead to natural queen rearing by 



