1891 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



167 



wanted to g<r the honey out. I put one at a 

 time in a clothes-boiler over the stove, with 

 water in the boiler to melt the honey. I took 

 off the screw cap. The honey was candied. 

 When it began to melt it began to run over. 

 The hole was so small that I could not get any 

 honey out except with a teaspoon — too much of 

 a job. I would not ])Ut over 58 lbs. in tliem 

 again. I like a good barrel with a few .50 and 

 KK) lb. kegs, to retail. Barrels are easy to han- 

 dle: you can roll them, and save lifting. I 

 have" shipped a great many tons of honey in 

 bai-rels. and never had anv leak. E. Fi'.axce. 

 Platteville. Wis.. Feb. i. 



[I think I can agree with you. friend France, 

 in regard to the iuadvisability of merging the 

 Bee-keepers" Union into the N. A. B. K. A. 

 Under its present management, and with its 

 small membership, the Union has done a mag- 

 nificent service. Could it do better under the 

 wings of the North American ? I doubt it. 



It is true, there is a kind of ignorant preju- 

 dice that some farmers and others have, that 

 bees injure their apple-crops. At 

 our Shane yard, located in an or- 

 chard, an old farmer intimated 

 that, since the bees had been there, 

 they had not been able to get any 

 apples. I showed him that there 

 were others who had no bees near 

 them who got no better crops. The 

 facts were, if the bees were remov- 

 ed entirely the crop would not be as 

 good. It is a remarkable fact. that, 

 whenever theie is a good yield of 

 buckwheat honey, there is always a 

 good crop of grain. A poor yield of 

 honey is accompanied by a moder- 

 ate yield of grain. I am glad to 

 get your testimony in regard to 

 barrels. But I am of the opinion 

 that, if you were in that dry climate 

 of California foi' awhile, you would 

 find it would shrink almost anv 

 thing: but your hints about hav- 

 ing the barrels stored foi' six months 

 in a dry place and then testing them with air 

 instead of water are excellent.] E. R. R. 



I have often thought that tlie young bees 

 that hatch from the five combs may be as suffi- 

 cient to perform the labors within the hive as 

 any larger numbi'i': or. in other words, they 

 may be able to prcpai'e the combs and store all 

 the honey the force of outside workers may 

 bring from the fields. 



One of the principal aims of contraction is to 

 get a rousing eight or ten frame colony, and 

 then compel the l»ees to go into the sections. 

 Contraction is I'eally not much of a success until 

 we get a " big rousing colony." 



Now. I am a firm believer in contraction: 

 still. I use a brood-chamoer with four frames 

 more than yours— that is. twelve frames. Up 

 to swarming last year. I tried my best to have 

 the queens fill all of the twelve frames with 

 brood. Eight frames proved to be an average 

 of the best they could do. At the opening of 

 the honey-harvest I arranged queen-excluding 

 zinc above and a queen-excluding zinc division- 

 board on each side of the four center frames of 

 brood, and placed the queen upon them. Then 

 as there was no brood in the two frames that 



CONTRACTION. 



THE RIGHT AXD WHOXG KIND. 



Friend Uoof;— Gleaxix(;s for Feb. I has just 

 come to hand: and while looking it over. I find 

 some ideas near the top of page 88 that need 

 answering, or a little explanation, from a con- 

 traction standpoint. It says, " The tendency of 

 the times is against contiaction to less than 

 eight frames. It is far better to have a big. 

 rousing colony on eight fi'ames. than a medium 

 one on four or six frames." 



Now, suppose you have a colony and I have a 

 colony, and the honey-harvest begins about the 

 .■i.5th of June and lasts until the 15th of July, 

 you may give your colony the freedom of eight 

 frames all the time, and I (in accordance with 

 contraction methods) will give mine the free- 

 dom of eight frames all the time until June 15th 

 or'-iOth, when I contract the brood-space to five 

 frames. Would not my colony be as rousing as 

 yours at the time of contraction '? Would not 

 my colony continue just as populous as yours 

 for at least 21 days following the conti'action? 



I have not known a honev-harvest in the 

 Northern States to last .'^0 davs— scarcelv ~'0: 

 but even if the harvest lasted 30 days", the 

 '.I days of brood production in the three ques- 

 tionable frames could not add to the storage of 

 honey, because of lack o; age of these bees. 



DAYTOX S OUEEX-ItE.STIilC'TOi;. 



were in the remote ends of the hive, they were 

 taken out and the two frames of brood on each 

 side of the excluding division-boards were 

 moved toward the ends of the hive, and a wide 

 frame of sections sandwiched between tliem 

 and the main brood-apartment. The sections 

 were filled full of foundation. It required only 

 about two days for these sections to be filled 

 with combs ready for the honey. When the 

 sections were half or two-thirds f lill of comb and 

 honey they were taken from the wide frames 

 and put ill supers on the top of the hive, and 

 new sections took their places in the wide 

 frames. Twenty colonies were managed thus. 

 At the close of a light harvest of seven days, 

 each colony had a crate of 38 sections nearly 

 finished, and five or six colonies had two crates 

 each in similar condition. 



At the time this contraction was begun there 

 was also put over each of sixteen picked colo- 

 nies a rack of 28 sections, two or three of which 

 sections contained combs as "baits."' Of these 

 sixteen colonies, only one went into the super to 

 work foundation at all, and the rest came oflf 

 as dry as when put on. 



A bee-keeper. Mr. Gue.st by name, called a 

 few minutes ago to talk bees, and said, " I think 

 contraction must be what I lack. I worked ten 

 days to make the bees go into the sections last 

 vear. and then failed."" 



At the top of page 88 it also says. '• Pollen in 

 the sections is usually the result of too much 

 contraction of the brood -nest."" It is because 



