370 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Al'K. 1. 



Dayton iisos a twelvc-fnimc L. liivc. wliile you 

 use a nine to fifteen frame Callup liive with or 

 witliont a five-inch pacivecl spaec on eacli side. 

 My i-(inarl<s were confined principally to tlie 

 eight-frame L. hive. Yon see the circumstances 

 were a little different. If all had liives. and 

 managed contraction as do you and friend Day- 

 ton, there would be nodisi)uting your grounds. 

 Hnt for some i-eason or other, the ft'/i(7<'/K'i/ of 

 the times is rather against contraction. Here 

 at the Home of the Honey-bees itjorced pollen 

 into the sections, and caused the bees to build 

 out and till the sections only over the contract- 

 ed bi'ood-nest. The sections projecting over 

 the brood-nest were liardly touched. If I did 

 very much conti'action I think 1 should jn-efer 

 to doita?f( Heddon. on the sectional brood- 

 cliamber plan. 



Dr. Miller used to be an advocate of contrac- 

 tion; l)ut now he lias rathei- gone back on it. 

 Pei'haps he \a ill tell us why. Hutchinson, in 

 the Bevhir. says. " With an eight-fi'ame hive I 

 have seldom found it advisable to contract the 

 brood-nest of an established colony." 



Yes. Dayton did make .some good points in 

 favor of conti'action. and you score some more 

 good ones: aftei- all. the more I I'ead your arti- 

 cle, the more I am inclined to believe that I do 

 not disagree with you very much as ijoii iiiaii- 

 n(je. If my printed statements do notagree.it 

 is because I have not made myself clear.] 



E. R. 



[Friend D.. I am greatly obliged to you for 

 the heavy testimony you have given us in re- 

 gard to chaff packing over an empty air-sjjace. 

 Perhaps your air-spaces were not air-tight: 

 but when I devised the chaff hive I made a 

 number of experiments vei'y much like those 

 you mention, to show the value of chaff. As 

 you stale it. it looks quite reasonable that your 

 method gives a larger force of bees: but I con- 

 fess I should have been better satisfied had you 

 mentioned that you tried several hives without 

 this plan of contraction you speak of.] A. I. R. 



STRONG COLONIES FOR GOOD RESULTS. 



I>rTTIN(i TWO Cor.OXIKS TOfiETHER IN SI'HIXO. 



Howevei' bee-keepers may diff'er on othersub- 

 jects. I think all are agreed on this. I^ast sea- 

 son was a poor one: and although my colonies 

 were fairly strong. I thought I would liiake sure 

 of having at least ])art of them give good re- 

 sults, so 1 doubled up a nuinbei'. It was a very 

 simple matter to double then, for my hives stand 

 in !)airs. each pair standing close side bv side, 

 and it w as easy to take one away and move the 

 otiiei- a little, so as to stand in the middle of tlie 

 placi' where thi' pair stood. The retuining bees 

 from each hive seemed very little troubled by the 

 cliange. The hives had eight fi-ames, and "none 

 of the fiaiues were taken away, but a second 

 story given, one queen being taken away. The 

 question may b(^ asked as to what I should gain 

 so long as i did not increase tli(> number of 

 workers. Well, suppose each hive would give a 

 surijlus of 10 lbs., and the two united would give 

 :.'() lbs., there would be only one colony instead 

 of two to haiuile. Besides, there ought to he 

 ivwer luifinishcd sections. 



Now forthe results. I can not sav for certain, 

 but. judging fi'om what other colonies did. I 

 think I didn't get as much honey from these 

 doubled -up colonies as I should ha%^e done if 

 they had been left separate. '•Why?'" I don't 

 know. Thafs one troul)le with my bees — they 

 have so little consideration for eitlier my tlieo- 

 ries or my feelings. I had counted on liiaking 

 (luite a splurge on reporting the considerable 



gain by my scheme, and it is no little humilia- 

 tion to own u|) a failure. But the bees don't 

 seem to care. Nearly always, when I iilan 

 something smart, the bees spoil it all. liut 1 

 don't always tell about it. ] don't like to. I've 

 too much consideration for the feelings of other 

 people. 



Altogether, I had some 3(J0 two-story affairs, 

 at least part of the season, although most of 

 them had only thi'ee or foiu' frames in the low- 

 story. A division-board was put beside th<>se 

 frames, and the empty space lilled up with hay. 

 To prevent comb-building between the two sto- 

 ries, a thin board was iiuf in some cases, but 

 generally a jiicce of cloth of some kind, iierhajis 

 an old bee-(juilt. This allows nocomniunication 

 between tlie two stories, excejjf a strip of one oi- 

 two inches, the width of the hive, at the front 

 or back end. 



If the queen was left in the upi)er story. I'm 

 not sure that she ever went down to the lower 

 story of her own accord; but if she was left in 

 the lower story, she was pretty sure to go up. 



«KAKIN(4 ror,ONIE:S UNDEK THE REOUI.AK 

 BUOOD-XEST. ETC. 



By means of this two-story business I made a 

 discovery of some value. Put a cloth or a 

 board between th(> upper and lower story, leav- 

 ing free communication between the two at 

 front or back, having the queen in the upper 

 story, and you may rely quite sureljon having 

 the bees stait queen-cells in the lower story. 

 It is much the same as Doolittle's plan of hav- 

 ing queen-cells above a queen-excluder. Bj^ 

 the way, if I'm not mistaken, the first public 

 mention of having queens raised in an upper 

 story with a laying (lueen below was made by 

 me in the columns of Gi.EANixcis, and I think 

 Doolittle refers to it in his book. 



At first I was much elated with the idea of let- 

 ting a young queen be raised to supeivsede the 

 old one. But in this I succeeded. I think, in only 

 a single instance. The young queen, in all oth- 

 er cases, was duly hatched. Iiut disappeared lie- 

 fore laying. If I were allowed to guess. I should 

 say she got along all right till, in her wander- 

 ings, she got upstairs, when tlu^ bees killed her. 

 It might be worth w hile to see w hat would be 

 the outcome if an exchuler were used so that 

 th(^ young queen could not get above. In Doo- 

 little's experience, when the old and the young 

 queens got together it was the old one that was 

 kill(>d. No matti'i' whether tli(> young (|ueen 

 was i'ais(Hl in an npp(U' or low (»r story, she was 

 the one to be killed with me. What made the 

 difference? Could the bad seastm have had any 

 thing to do with it? 



Let me tell you the use I made of the discov- 

 ery. It proved, in the first place, that a young 

 queen can be rai.-ed in a hive with a laying 

 (pieen. without the use of a queen-excluder. Such 

 queen se(uns to lie raised by the bees on the 

 same pi'inciph^ as superseding, and may be ex- 

 pected to b(> of the best quality. If I wanted to 

 save the queen I took her away just before oi' 

 just after hatching. If I wanted to start a nu- 

 cleus, all I had to do was to take away the low- 

 er story, bees and all. and set it in a new place. 

 Enotigh bees would adhere to it to take care of 

 the brood; and that brood, hatching out. would 

 make quite a colony by the time tlu' young 

 queen commenced to lay. 



Of course, taking the brood away in this way 

 deprived the colony of the young bees it would 

 have had later. If I wanted these younger bees 

 to be left with the old colony, or, rathei. if I 

 wanted to return to the old colony all the field- 

 bees of the nucleus, aftei' the young que<'n be- 

 ban to lay. my plan w as a little different. In- 

 stead of taking the lower story to a new jilace. I 

 set it on top of the supers on the old place. Of 



