1884 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



2S3 



es. Suppose no one had ever thought of reversible 

 frames; suppose all frames in the past had been ar- 

 ranged like Brother Baldridge's and Howes'. Now, 

 would not the first one who thought of cutting the 

 wood top-bar long enough to rest on the rabbets, 

 have made a valuable invention? Looked at in this 

 light we at once discover the inferiority of the re- 

 versible frame, except for reversing. 



Several have written to me, asking if I can not 

 make my surplwt case reversible. After studying 

 upon the matter, I can not see how it can be done, 

 without incurring expense, weakness, and complica- 

 tion of management. I have never reversed sur- 

 plus combs very much; have never given it a fair 

 practical test; but from what I have done, and what 

 I know of the instinctive action of bees, I should ex- 

 pect the following: 



1. If we reverse them when so partially developed 

 that there is little or no sealed honey at the top of 

 the sections, there will be danger in warm weather 

 of their falling down, or lopping over sidewise, as 

 Brother Hoot experienced; but suppose we wait till 

 the case is about two-thirds completed; then if we 

 reverse it, will the bees not do considerable uncap- 

 ping, tear away some comb already built, and have 

 a regular changing around generally, especially at 

 all times when the honey-flow is not excessive? 



Again, can we not better and more cheaply accom- 

 plish the object sought in reversing the surplus 

 combs, in another way ? The reversing of the brood- 

 combs seems to me much more practical than re- 

 versing the surplus receptacles. I think I have a 

 better plan for such reversion than any I have yet 

 aeen, which consists in reversing the whole hive at 

 one movement, but a description of which would re- 

 quire too much space for this article. Of course, 

 this method would require movable bottom-boards, 

 which 1 much object to, greatly preferring the per- 

 manent ones. I could not think of using any frame 

 system that necessitated the use of nails and wires, 

 spacers, etc., to hold the frames at certain distances 

 from each other and from the hive. We can not af- 

 ford to give up the "laterally movable frame. " 



Let me here assert, that it is wise to keep right in 

 the beaten track, till the experimenters are found 

 adopting the ir new plans on a large scale. 



QUEEN-EXCLUDING HONEY-BOAUDS, AND NON- 

 SWARMING ATTACHMENTS. 



W ith the latter I h ave had much experience ; with 

 the former, less. With other fixtures properly ar- 

 ranged, I would not give two cents per hive for a 

 queen-excluding honey-board, iu the production of 

 comb. honey. Why should we, when, during many 

 seasons, we do not have three sections with brood 

 in, in the whole apiary? When producing extract- 

 ed honey we should like the advantages that would 

 accrue from Keeping the queen in the lower story at 

 all times. My experiments force me to the conclu- 

 sion that we shall fail of practical success in the use 

 of spaces too small to admit our smaller queens, if 

 we expect our laden workers to do successful busi- 

 pess through them. 



Inyour next issue I will give you a description of 

 a non-swarming attachment that has given satisfapr 

 tion all around. 



I think you misunderstood me regarding my criti- 

 cism of Bro. Doolittle's method. I simply saicj J 

 thought him behind the times regarding the advant- 

 ages derived from the use of fdn.,and that bis more 

 ancient experiments with top storing only were 

 jnuQh behind the methods of to-day. J^o jiot believe 



that Mr. Doolittle, with his methods, will get an 

 ounce more honey than Mr. Shirley, Mr. Hutchinson, 

 or myself, with my style of fixtures, if placed all in 

 the same location. I do not see where we lose any. 

 I was recently honored by a visit from one of Amer- 

 ica's brightest apiarists, a man of 20 years' experi- 

 ence and close observation — one who knows Michi- 

 gan and my locality exactly: one who is also perfect- 

 ly familiar witb Mr. Doolittle's resources for honey; 

 one who has kept bees near him, and he says that 

 our opportunities for surplus honey are not to be 

 compared to Brother Doolittle's. Brother D.'S arti- 

 cle on page 180 corroborates my visitor's statement 

 in part. James Heddon, 



Dowagiac, Mich. 



Friend IL , you will recollect that I advised, 

 several years ago. reversing the whole hive, 

 or, at least, the brood-apartment. This can 

 very easily be done with a Simplicity hive, 

 and we did do it at the time, and published 

 an account of it some time ago. Just put a 

 strip of wood across the frames at each end, 

 right over where the metal corners come. 

 Brad it to the sides of the hive where the 

 end of the stick strikes, and you are then 

 ready to turn the hive over. If the bottoms 

 and 'frames are inclined to tip, space them 

 with a strip cut off from the spacing-board, 

 as mentioned elsewhere in this number. 

 There is a little difficulty in getting on an 

 upper story ; but where we work for comb 

 honey, we do not want an upper story, un- 

 less we use wide frames instead of cases. In 

 that case, a hive will have to be prepared 

 before it is inverted. Surely this is less 

 trouble than reversing the frames one at a 

 time. 



AL.S1KE CLOVER; SOME ADDITIONAL 

 IINFOKl^JATION. 



CAN WE HAVE BOTH CLOVER SEED AND nONEY? 



SN Gleanings for June, 1883, page 333, you say, in 

 order to get seed from alsike clover, you will 

 — ' have to let it stand until it is pretty much 

 spoiled for hay. Now, what I wish to say is this: A 

 neighbor cut a field of alsike for seed, and stacked it 

 in the field to await thrashing. The young clover 

 came up very fine, and he turned in a flock of sheep. 

 They stayed all winter. The thrasher failed to come, 

 and the sheep ate the stack all up. He fed another 

 lot of sheep on corn, to ship east for mutton, and on 

 examination he found the lot that was wintered on 

 the hay was the fatter, by considerable. 



Now, you see that if we bee-men could get the 

 farmers to see this, they would pr'^fer to sow alsike 

 in preference to red clover, as alsike is as good as a 

 fertilizer, as it has several tap roots instead of one, 

 and is harder to freeze out. Jacob Kennedy. 



Mont Clair, Ind., March 14, 1883. 



Friend K., I am much obliged to you for 

 the facts you furnish. Still I should want to 

 suggest to you that my idea was to the ef- 

 fect that, if we let the clover get sufficiently 

 ripe to thrash out the seed, the straw will be 

 worth comparatively little for hay. I have 

 just talked with iNeighbor IL about it, how- 

 ever, and he says his sheep have always done 

 well on the hay left after the seed was 

 thrashed out. :Now, in your case you must 

 have given the sheep a good many bushels of 

 ^Isike-clover seed, worth from SI I to $12 per 

 bushel ; while if the seed had been thrashed 

 x)jjt they would have had the hay only. It 

 segms to me that sheep oiajht to get fat on 

 §u^h an expensive diet as alsike-clover seeq. 



