280 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



July 



are so excellently made that if I lived 

 in that neighborhood I would consider 

 adopting a frame of a size to fit 

 them ; except in large cities they are 

 not sufficiently common to make it 

 worth while starting a cartridge case 

 apiary. But it is different with soap, 

 canned salmon, baking powder and 

 similar things. 



I shall bring down contempt upon 

 my head if I recommend the small bee- 

 keeper to cut packing case material 

 to hold Langstroth frames, to use a 

 sheet of enameled cloth over the 

 frames, to paint or tar cotton cloth 

 over a rough cover, even to descend 

 to the disgraceful use of glue in this 

 form of carpentry. You would pre- 

 fer to keep him a gum beekeeper or 

 a non-beekeeper; I am for making 

 him, at all costs, some sort of a mov- 

 able-frame beekeeper. School teach- 

 ers to whom one shows contemporary 

 price lists say that it simply isn't 

 practical politics to 'urge their 

 charges to go in for modern equip- 

 ment. They are the best authori- 

 ties on this matter; we must believe 

 what they say and find some way of 

 turning the coming generation into 

 movable-frame usei's. 



The use of straw has advantages 

 and defects. In Europe, of course, 

 even with lumber at pre-war levels, 

 it has always been popular. I would 

 not for a'n instant advocate the use 

 of the "skep," familiar to Americans 

 on honey labels and nowhere else. 

 The skep is a trifle better than the 

 gum; that is all that can be said for 

 it. But the use of plaited straw 

 brood-chambers, where the straw 

 rope is bound tightly round a skele- 

 ton of wooden lath, has much to 

 recommend it. A British firm has 

 for years marketed a hive of this 

 type, known as the Buncefield. The 

 plaiting of straw and twine is an un- 

 known art in this country. When in 

 France, I greatly admired the way 

 the French truck drivers made bon- 

 net covers of straw rope for their 

 trucks. It was closely woven and 

 stiff in texture, and wai-m and water- 



proof. The first attempt to make 

 this sort of hive would probably re- 

 sult in something like little sister's 

 first attempt to make biscuits, and 

 there is a danger that they would be 

 condenmed as bum affaii-s; but I feel 

 sure that anyone who had seen a 

 snug, well-made straw-and-lath body 

 would realize its possibilities. This 

 is one of the things for which one re- 

 quires the local craftsman, the skilled 

 specialist who supplies local needs. 

 It is not likely that the large firms 

 would take it up, and it would be too 

 tiresome for each individual bee- 

 keeper to acquire the necessary skill 

 and practice. Unless the price of 

 lumber shows signs of making a big 

 descent it looks as if it might pay an 

 inventive textile engineer to devise 

 a rough combing and plaiting ma- 

 chine for straw and twine, for there 

 are many other purposes to which it 

 could be turned beside beehives. No- 

 body who has ever seen a ten-year- 

 old skep, as hard as a board, var- 

 nished by the bees on the inside, can 

 realize how snug and satisfactory a 

 material it is. For the circular skep, 

 a mid-rib of bramble is usually em- 

 ployed by the village maker; but for 

 frame hives, with their angle cor- 

 ners, wire could be used. The Brit- 

 ish firm I mentioned uses bamboo 

 strips. 



Virginia. 



(We used straw movable-frame 

 hives years ago. They were bound 

 with wire, and the corners were 2-inch 

 square posts. They were really bet- 

 ter than wood, being warm and 2 

 inches thick. But the mice gnawed 

 their way through the walls in num- 

 erous instances. Can any one sug- 

 gest a remedy? — Editor.) 



DRONE-COMB AND ITS (AB)USE 



By F. Greiner 

 The progressive honey producer of 

 today has no use for drone-comb in 

 the brood-nests of his hives. In the 

 bee books and bee periodicals we are 

 admonished to "cut it out." both lit- 



Mi-tal fraim; supports invented by Harry Hartnian, uf lir.uklyville, Iowa. This is somewhat 

 similar to Doctor Miller's wood splints, except that it is made of metal and fastened to both 

 top and bottom of frame. 



erally and figuratively, and it is well 

 to do so; we are agreed on that. In 

 earlier issued bee books, as well as in 

 the latest, drone-comb has been given 

 the' name "store comb," whether 

 merited or not. Indeed, we very often 

 find the nicest 'pieces of honey even 

 in bee trees, of drone size. Theoret- 

 ically, it is cheaper, or more econom- 

 ical to build drone-comb than worker- 

 comb; the larger the cells the less 

 material required. When combs of 

 the large-sized cells are whirled 

 around in the honey extractor the 

 honey comes out easier and cleaner, 

 less adhering to the cell-walls. This 

 is true, and from our standpoint it 

 might be considered an advantage to 

 have drone-comb used in our supers, 

 in particular the extracting supers. 

 The bees, however, are not guided by 

 their sense of economy when it comes 

 to building comb to store their 

 honey, and build both worker and 

 drone-comb haphazard. They do this 

 even when we may have eliminated 

 all drone-comb from their brood- 

 chamber by the use of full sheets of 

 comb-foundation, and it would seem 

 that they would, under these circum- 

 stances, in their desperation, con- 

 struct nothing but the large cells. The 

 large majority of us beekeepers have 

 for many years used full sheets of 

 comib-foundation in our brood-frames, 

 yet we had to cull out many otherwise 

 nice combs on account of the founda- 

 tion having sagged to an extent to 

 make them, for all practical 'purposes, 

 drone-comb; and many of these have 

 been used in the extracting supers. 

 It is about time that all these combs 

 containing any unsuitable cells, i. e., 

 of drone size, be culled out again and 

 rendered into wax. Why? Are we 

 not using queen excluders? In an- 

 swer I want to say that I have, as oth- 

 ers, used drone-combs over excluders 

 for years, and while I have seen some 

 drone-comb filled with honey, more 

 often these combs have been kept free 

 from honey very persistently by the 

 bees, expecting the queen would find 

 them and they might rear a nice lot 

 of drones 'there. Alas, sometimes a 

 queen has found a defect in the ex- 

 cluder and squeezed through and did 

 what was expected of her, but not to 

 our satisfaction. Much valuable comb 

 space has thus been wasted by our 

 bees for years, and it is high time, 

 as I said before, to put a stop to it. 

 We cannot keep our extracting su- 

 pers as free from drone-comb as our 

 brood-chambers. Better render all 'de- 

 fective combs into wax and substitute 

 comb-foundation instead. May I, 

 right here, give vent to my feelings, 

 expressing my determination in this 

 resolution to take more pains in the 

 future, to have more perfect brood- 

 combs, to have all foundation-filled 

 frames built out without any sagging, 

 having them built out, if possible, 

 down to the bottom-bar? This may 

 mean better wiring, having frames 

 built out in upper stories, etc. I want 

 to cite a mistake I made at the time 

 when I adopted the sectional hive 

 years ago, a mistake that has cost me 

 dearly, from which I am still suffering 



