GLEANiKGS IN JBEE CULTURE. 



357 



Bees can be shaken out of their section boxes 

 almost completely. The tew remaining' bees will 

 find their exit and their way home when the boxes 

 are placed in a dark room with the windows lower- 

 ed. Chas. F. Muth. 



With our two-pound sections we shake the bees 

 from each one separately. We were told that we 

 could shake them out of our one-pound section 

 case (used first last season), but our bees don't 

 shake well; in fact, the shaking affected us more 

 than it did the bees. We may have to resort to 

 drumming them out, as with the old glass boxes. 



P. H. Elwood. 



1. I smoke on the top until the majority of the 

 bees go down, then take the cases into a rather 

 dark room with one opening. By evening all the 

 bees will have left the sections, and gathered on 

 the opening, etc. There are several other methods, 

 but I prefer this one, especially when using two or 

 more tiers of sections, as it doesn't leave the bees 

 without sections to work in until you can return 

 whatever sections are not quite finished. 



Paul L. Viallon. 



This department is too limited to do justice to the 

 subject. It depends somewhat on the kind of fix- 

 tures used to hold the sections. I have used bee- 

 escapes successfully, on both cases and hives. I 

 practice a method not in use by any one else that I 

 know of; in which I shake the bees off the sections 

 in wide frames into a hopper, and return the bees 

 to the hive. H. R. Boardman. 



1. Remove the cover of the hive, smoke the 

 bees between the sections, lean over, and blow with 

 your mouth as hard as possible, when the bees will 

 make a stampede downward. Before a reaction, 

 snap off the surplus case, give it a few smart, 

 trembling jerks, then set it in a screen-house or 

 dark room with one light hole for the bees to go 

 out at, standing it on end so that the air will move 

 through the space between the combs readily; soon 

 the few remaining bees will all be gone, and others 

 will not return if robbing is rife. 3. As above. 



James Heddon. 



If I am handling sections singly, I shake and 

 brush them off. If the whole case or rack is being 

 handled, I smoke them at the top before removing 

 them from the hive, when most of the bees will 

 leave the boxes, and it may be removed and set 

 upon its edge, on the alighting-board, and again 

 smoked, when the bees will pass into the hive. In 

 taking off large quantities of sections in haste, so 

 that they are not entirely freed from bees before 

 being carried in, I have practiced stacking them in 

 a pile, and placing a nucleus box with a caged 

 queen at the top, where the bees would all gather.. 



L. C. Root. 



I presume the above question was given 

 witli the view of finding out who had used 

 bee-escapes, such as we have recently illus- 

 trated, for getting the bees out of the sec- 

 tions. It transpires, however, that only a 

 few have used them. Friend Ileddon seems 

 to have had considerable experience in the 

 matter, for he goes at it as if he had had 

 practice in getting the bees from tons of 

 honey. 



Question No. oh— Does removing the queen, in the 

 height of the honey-flow, stop or diminish the honey f 



I think not. 



H. R. Boardman. 



It diminishes work for the first eight days. 



P. H. Elwood. 

 It tends to check the storing of honey. 



Mrs. L. Harkison. 

 It generally diminishes the amount of surplus. 



Dr. a. B. Mason. 

 It will not, as a rule, affect the disposition of the 

 bees to store honey. L. C. Root. 



I am convinced that such is the case, in a majori- 

 ty of the trials which I have made. 



G. M. Dooi.itti,e. 

 No, not if they have the material within the hives 

 to commence rearing more queens. 



James Heddon. 

 It will not stop or diminish the flow, for at least a 

 few days; but it will stop breeding and diminish the 

 bees, and the consequences will soon be apparent. 

 Paul L. Viallon. 

 It certainly would not increase it, except in that 

 it would lessen the amount of honey used in brood- 

 rearing, and would release more bees for labor in 

 the fields. W. Z. Hutchinson. 



I have many a time so removed the queen, and I 

 never noticed any difference. Still, there may 

 have been a difference, and on the whole I prefer a 

 queen in the hive. C. C. Miller. 



Sometimes it seems as though their ardor was 

 dampened, and again it seems to have no effect. 

 Generally the removal of the queen causes them to 

 work less earnestly. Geo. Grimm. 



I have not experimented on this interesting 

 point. I should expect that some colonies would 

 stop almost entirely, and that other colonies would 

 work almost as well as before. E. E. Hasty. 



It does, in my estimation, check the production of 

 comb honey. The check to the flow of extracted 

 honey is less noticeable when the upper story has a 

 full set of combs, and no building need be done. 



Chas. F. Muth. 



Reason says no. But it always seemed to us that 

 it diminished the result; at any rate, more honey is 

 put in the brood-chamber than there would be oth- 

 erwise, since the queen is no longer there to refill 

 the cells with brood, and less of the made crop is 

 available for the apiarist. Dadant & Son. 



I have made but very few experiments in this 

 line; but those few seemed to diminish rather than 

 increase the amount of honey stored. There is a 

 great difference in this respect in the different 

 races of bees, and I prefer those that diminish 

 brood-rearing of their own accord during the height 

 of the honey-flow. O. O. Poppleton. 



Not in the least. Mrs. L. B. Baker, who had quite 

 a phenomenal success as a bee-keeper, removed 

 her queens every season as the harvest opened. 

 She got a very great quantity of fine comb honey- 

 probably more than though the queen had been 

 left; but breeding ceased; and so if there was a 

 basswood harvest, the bees were not prepared for it. 



A. J. Cook. 



No, not with us. Take a strong colony of bees in 

 the height of a honey-flow. Take away their queen, 

 but leave them eggs or very young larvae from 

 which to raise a queen. They are then in a perfect- 

 ly natural condition, and will gather honey just as 

 fast as they would if they had a laying queen. In 

 fact, they will gain in honey faster; as fast as the 



