1886 



C4LEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE. 



529 



super, furnished with louufLation or combs, the re- 

 sult is that all the honey g-oes into the super, while 

 the brood-nest is filled with sheets of solid hrood. 

 According' to the experiments that I made, if the 

 foundation had been given to me it would have 

 been used at a loss when put into the brood-cham- 

 ber and swarms hived upon it. 



At the Detroit convention, Mr. H. K. Boardinan 

 said he had tried hiving swarms upon empty frames, 

 and was pleased with the result. Mr. .1. B. Hall had 

 also tried it. but too much drone comb was the re- 

 sult. This [ attribute to his large brood-chambers. 



Mr. Doolittle's ai-ticle, " Production of Wa.v," is 

 right to the iioint. Because bees in confinement re- 

 quire twenty pounds of honey to produce one 

 pound of wax. it does not follow that a new swarm 

 can not build the combs in the brood-nest to bet- 

 ter advantage to their owner than to draw out foun- 

 dation. 



Mr. Doolittle speaks of dispensing with founda- 

 tion because it is expensive. " A (.enny saved is a 

 penny earned," etc. That is not the question. Bee- 

 keepers do not look upon foundation as a hi.rury — 

 something that cauld be dispensed with— but rather 

 a.neces!fity. It does not pay to " retrench as much 

 as possible " in the use of ,s'o»ie things. The ques- 

 tion is, " Does it pay to use foundation in the brood- 

 nest when hiving swarinsV" If it does, where is the 

 economy of allowing bees to build their own combs':' 

 If it paytt, the more we use the larger the profit; and 

 if it (/oe.^^i't, nobody will be fool enough to use it 

 simply for the fun of the thing. 



Rogersville, Mich. W. Z. Hutchinson. 



After reading the above, a great many 

 thing.s not heretofore phiiu became all at 

 once easy to understand. For instance : 

 Just before we commenced manufacturing 

 extractors, a neighbor brought me a good- 

 sized swarm of black bees. I had l)een buy- 

 ing all the bees in the country around, and 

 at prices that enabled our country friends to 

 take a horse and buggy and bring me every 

 swarm as fast as it came off. Well, the 

 swarm mentioned was brought about the 

 middle of July, the owner expecting I would 

 give at least So.OO for it. I told him the 

 basswood yield was so near over I could not 

 possibly give over $2. (JO ; and some of my 

 old bee-friends thought the bees were not 

 worth any thing, because they could not 

 possibly gather honey enough to winter. I 

 had my own ideas in regard to it, however. 

 I gave the bees a full set of combs, and tliey 

 went right to work, and in two days their 

 combs were almost like lead, the honey spark- 

 ling from corner to corner — none of it cap- 

 ped over, of course. To my surprise, not an 

 egg was to be seen, and I "began wondering 

 if they were not queenless. I gave them 

 more room, however, but no eggs were found 

 for something like a week. The honey came 

 so fast that the queen didn't have a chance 

 to commence, or perhaps the bees were so 

 eager to improve the time that they couldn't 

 stop to prepare cells for her use. Now, then, 

 friends, had the empty combs I gave the 

 bees been shallow, say four or live inches 

 deep, and had room been provided below for 

 comb-building, the honey would all have 

 gone into these shallow combs. New combs 

 would meanwhile have been built under 

 them, which the (jueen would have occupied 

 with brood. Thus we see liow plain it is 

 that more Iwne)/ will be stored in the sec- 

 tions where the' new swarm is given empty 

 frames than if they had empty combs, or 

 even frames filled with foundation. We 

 should be very glad of more experiments on 

 this subject while the season permits. 



Of course, this condition of affairs refers 

 to comb honey. Where one is working for 



extracted honey, by all means give them 

 empty combs ; and if you can n(>t do that, 

 give them empty frames filled with founda- 

 tion. New swarms will give enormous quan- 

 tities of extracted honey, if provided with 

 empty combs when first hived ; that is, if I 

 am correct in the matter ; and I should be 

 very glad indeed to have friend Hutchin- 

 son's opinion in regard to this latter — that 

 is, if he has ever tried working new swarms 

 for extracted honey. 



INDUCING BEES TO COMMENCE WORK 

 IN THE SECTIONS, ETC. 



GLEANINGS AS AN ADVERTISING MEDIUiM. 



fHAT Gleanings is a first-class medium for 

 advertising, has been fully proved to my- 

 self, while at the 'same time it has added 

 largely to my labors in the waj' of answering 

 letters. A few weeks ago, it may be remem- 

 bered, I gave a method of my own for enticing or 

 forcing bees into sections, by shaving combs in the 

 brood-chamber to 's inch thick, spacing them just a 

 bee-space apart, and putting on sections at the first 

 approach of the honey season. Well, for the last 

 three weeks Icttei's have been coming to me from 

 various sections in regai-d to the matter; and, 

 strange to say, evei'y one from persons who had 

 tested, in a small way, the method I described; but 

 it is not at all strange that every one had found the 

 method did work just as I had stated it would. One 

 writer is veiT enthusiastic over it, saj'ing that, with 

 him, it does a thing that has bothered him for years, 

 and is the only reasonable and easy way of getting' 

 bees into sections that he has ever tried. And with 

 myself, I desire to say that it works every time; 

 there are no failures, and there can be none, as it is 

 in direct accordance with the natural habits of the 

 bees, and is only doing with frames just what they 

 do in box hives and hollow trees. It is useless to 

 expect that a frame hive alone, no matter whose 

 patent it may be, will give us good results, without 

 Home labor on our part. The point is, to do the re- 

 quired labor in the easiest, cheapest, and most nat- 

 ural way, because this will be found the best way. 

 I trust that every one who has v/ritten to me will 

 reijort the results in Gleanings and the other 

 journals, so that, if the plan is of any value, the 

 fraternity may all know it, and have the benefit of 

 it. As it can be tested at any time, and with any 

 hive, it will cause no trouble to do so, and the re- 

 sults, I know, will be surprising to any who are at 

 all skeptical. 



INTRODUCING QUEENS. 



It seems a little strange to mo that so mnnj- find 

 trouble in introducing queens. I admit, that I once 

 found great trouble myself; but the most of it was 

 caused by over-anxiety. The so-called "Siramins 

 method " is so nearly absolutely safe, however, that 

 the veriest novice would not lose 3 per cent by us- 

 ing it, while the exjjert will meet with comparatively 

 no loss at all; and if he should, it would be one of 

 those cases where the loss was una\'oidable, and 

 would have hapjjened under any circumstances. I 

 use, however, a modification of the ''Simmins 

 method," and deem it fullj- as simple and handy. I 

 have introduced many queens by my way, and nev- 

 er lost one yet. Some of these queens were virgins, 

 but almost all were fertilized. Tlie plan or meth- 

 od I use altogether now is, to remove the old queen, 



