454 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



November 



SOME BEE PHOTOGRAPHS 



By F. Dundas Todd 



The first picture is a view of part 

 of my own apiary as it looked in the 

 beginning of July, 1920, when it was 

 all set for the honey crop that never 

 cailie. It shows the transformation 

 complete from a system when only 

 shallow bodies were used to the modi- 

 fied Dadant. With poor seasons it 

 has been quite a task to get the new 

 combs built, but the work is over and 

 I am glad I made the change. All 

 through a dozen years I have had but 

 one thought, the avoidance of heavy 

 lifting; hence the adoption of the 

 shallow body. But I found I had 

 very many medium lifts, so I tried a 

 few modified Dadants, always won- 

 dering what Mr. Dadant meant when 

 he said in answer to one of my re- 

 marks about the heavy lifts, "Why 

 lift a Dadant hive?" Now that I have 

 had as high as forty-two going at one 

 time, my only regret is that I did not 

 start with these hives, as they are the 

 easiest worked of any I have tried, 

 and one lifts a brood chamber but sel- 

 dom. 



Seeing we have much rain in winter 

 and spring, and that our nights are 

 invariably cool in summer, I have re- 

 tained the principle of the cap, but 

 have detached it from the roof, in 

 other words, I have risers to enclose 

 the supers, as is the fashion with Brit- 

 ish beemen. 



Each riser is the depth of an ordi- 

 nary hive. In winter one is occupied 

 by a sack of dry leaves, and that is 

 about all the preparations I make for 

 winter, but since that pillow of moss 

 is used all the year round, the minute 

 the supers are removed the sack is 

 just naturally placed in position, and 

 packing is all done, provided there are 

 enough stores in the brood chamber. 

 So that part is easy, much easier than 

 with my old plan of cases filled with 

 packing. I have room for eleven 

 Jumbo frames with inch-and-a-half 

 spacing in the brood chamber. When 

 I cut down the number I fill in with 

 enough three-quarter inch followers, 

 usually four, hence the side walls are 



Wm. Wilson's apiary in Kent, England 



more than two inches thick, the back 

 is an inch and a half, and the front 

 is three-quarters of an inch. 



Each super contains 9 or 10 ordi- 

 nary shallow frames in a ypace that 

 will hold 12 if crowded, a capacity of 

 at least 45 pounds of honey. Two 

 risers still protect three supers, but I 

 use only two, then the pillow of moss 

 above. In spring the only unpacking 

 is to remove the sack of moss, which 

 takes but a moment, and the frames 

 are available for examination. Until 

 the first of July I have but the one 

 story, the brood chamber; after that 

 I handle supers, and there my heavi- 

 est lift is about 50 pounds. It is by 

 far the simplest beekeeping system I 

 ever tried, so I am content. 



The tallest hive in the row deserves 

 special notice, as it is my first at- 

 tempt at running a twin hive, that is, 

 one with two queens side by side, 

 with only a wire netting between. I 

 have had this kind of thing on my 

 mind for over a dozen years, but 

 could not get interested in the idea of 

 trying to run a hive at least 28 inches 

 wide, that is to say, twice the widtn 

 of an eight-frame hive, then a second 

 story of like dimensions to complete 



Tuild'h apiary lu MudiliLiI llaJaiit Ihvls 



the brood chamber in May, followed 

 by supers of the same size. Even 

 limiting each queen to 12 combs 

 meant a front of not less than 21 

 inches, all odd-sized dimensions. Last 

 winter it struck me the Dadant hive 

 was just ideal for the venture, as 10 

 Jumbo frames would be about right, 

 these in two stories. So I made the 

 center partitions of double mosquito 

 netting, separated by a framework of 

 three-eighths inch wood. The second 

 story is made of two supers nailed to- 

 gether, and also has a partition like 

 the one below. Above is a queen ex- 

 cluder, then the super, which has no 

 partition, so the bees have the space 

 in common. 



So far I have had no success with 

 the three double colonies I started; 

 they were no better and no worse 

 than the other colonies in the yard. 

 The queens were all young and from 

 a good breeder, but the start was 

 made after our spring flow was over, 

 and no colony could possibly build up 

 in the dearth that followed. One bee- 

 man in the city of Victoria tried one 

 a year ago, getting from it a crop that 

 easily excelled the total of 8 other 

 colonies in the yard, and that is al- 

 most all I can say about the system 

 thus far. 



I am going to modify it a little bit 

 in 1922 by separating the second 

 story of the brood chamber into parts, 

 perpendicularly, so that I can work 

 one side entirely without disturbing 

 the other; besides, I will have less 

 weight to lift. These half bodies 

 have ends of ordinary thickness, but 

 the walls are only of half-inch board, 

 this being necessary to get them in- 

 side the risers. Incidentally, these 

 half bodies will do nicely for queen 

 mating as well. 



In all of these double hives I no- 

 ticed one feature worth mentioning — 

 the tendency of the bees to gather to 

 one side, the west one, in all cases, 

 when the partition was put in. When 

 supers were put on I expected the 

 bees would cross over to the other 

 side quite frequently and so equalize 

 the colonies, but I could never see 

 that they ever did so. Maybe if the 

 population had become very strong 



