35(5 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 1. 



1)(H'S hatch to take the place of those wearing 

 out daily: iience all perish; while, if they had 

 been left to themselves, they would have been 

 less active, the few young bees which hatched 

 would iiave taken the place of those which died, 

 and, when settled wafin weather came, the few 

 young smart bees which wei'e in the hive at 

 that time would and could care for a large lot 

 of brood in proportion to their numbers, so that 

 the colony would build up for the next winter if 

 nothing more. I once had a colony get so low in 

 this way that then^ were, by actual count, only 

 eighty odd bees the fore part of June: and yet 

 this little colony, without any assistance from 

 any other colony, built up into a good colony 

 for winter, and gave two of the large old-fash- 

 ioned sections of nice sealed buckwheat honey. 

 Qr. Miller and several other of our best bee- 

 keepers have reached the same conclusions re- 

 garding uniting spring-dwindling colonies that 

 I have, if I am not mistaken. By confining 

 these small colonies to as few frames as they 

 can cover, and building them up as fast as pos- 

 sible when it comes warm weather, and then 

 uniting them just before the honey harvest, has 

 given me splendid results in honey, as I have 

 given in back volumes of our bee-papers. 



LARGE SWARMS TO PREVENT SAVARMING. 



I see Mr. Robbins, Mr. Dayton, yourself, and 

 others are discussing the swarming question, 

 along the line of large hives, etc.. you claiming 

 that it is the large hive used by the Dadants 

 and Bro. France which give them so little 

 swarming. Now, it seems to me that, from the 

 light of the past, no one can deny that your po- 

 sition is right: for, away back when our la- 

 mented Quinby wrote his •' ^lysteries of B(X'- 

 keeping Explained," he told us" that a hive of 

 4000 or more cubic inches filled with comb was 

 almost an absolute non-swarmer. bees staying 

 in such hives for years without swarming. I 

 quote from memory, and have not tried to get 

 the exact words. No one, so far as I know, has 

 any trouble, to any extent, with swai'ms when 

 working for extracted honey, which working 

 always demands a large amount of comb space, 

 if we are to have the best results. But the real 

 point at issue, as I look at it, lies in the fact that 

 no best results in eomh lioneycau be secured and 

 use a hive containing from .WOO to 4000 cubic 

 inches in the brood-chamber, orthat amount of 

 space filled with empty comb in farly spring. 

 Quinby told us that a 4600-cubic-inch hive fill- 

 ed only a third full of comb the previous sea.son, 

 would just as surely give a swarm before more 

 comb of any amount \^as built, as would a hive 

 filled with "comb one-third this size, and this 

 brings the thing down to just where we find it 

 in working for comb honey. We have the small 

 Inve filled with comb, and the sections without 

 comb: oi', if you please so to term it, a thi'ee or 

 four thousand-cubic-inch hive, one-third of 

 which is filled with brood-combs and the rest 

 with sections, in reality empty as the bees view 

 it, and swarming is the result. Should we fill 

 our ',*.")00 cubic inches of section room with sec- 

 tions filled with empty comb, on the "continu- 

 ous-passageway" plan, we should not have any 

 swarming. Biit. alas, we do not wish, to do 

 this, for reasons too numerous to mention here, 

 and so it comes about that he who works for 

 comb honey must expect to have swarms: and. 

 if 1 am correctly informed, the Dadants and 

 Mr. France are as subject to them as any of the 

 rest of us with the few bees they work for comb 

 lioney. whenever they work for th<^ same. The 

 trouble seems to be. that we sometimes con- 

 found the working for comb and extracted hon- 

 ey, so that the reader is perplexed to know our 

 meaning. If my memory serves me rightly. I 

 have never had' more than three swarms from 



all the colonies I ever worked forextracted hon- 

 ey with my small brood-chambers: and years 

 ago I produced extracted honey by the thousand 

 pounds. A non-swarming hive for comb honey 

 is a desirable thing, but something not yet 

 brought about. G. M. Doolittle. 



Borodino, N. Y., April 15. 



[Friend D., I have had just the same experi- 

 ence you have in putting a number of sick or 

 diseased remnants together. At other tim(>s I 

 have surely saved weak colonies by \initing. 

 Where one has quite a few bees, and no queen, 

 and the other has a queen but not the bees, it 

 will surely pay to unite them, and we may often 

 discover weak colonies that may be united with 

 queenless ones: for during dwindling, queens 

 have a way of disappearing suddenly, as well 

 as bees.] 



SWAEMING AND THE HONEY-HARVEST. 



HOW MAY AVE GET THE MOST HONEY' WHEN 

 BEES SW.\RM DURING THE HONEY' SEA- 

 SON, AND KEEP DOWN INCREASE 

 AT THE SAME TIME? 



Does swarming during the honey-flow neces- 

 sarily diminish the quantity of surplus gather- 

 ed ? that is, can we get as much comb honey as 

 we could if they would work right on without 

 swarming? I think I can. but it is not as 

 easy to tell how to do it as it is to tell how not 

 to. When a swarm comes oflf, hive it in a full- 

 sized brood-chamber, and set it on a new stand. 

 When the lower story becomes full, put on 

 empty surplus arrangements. Let the unfinish- 

 ed sections on the old colony remain there. 

 Hive tlu> after-swarms, and treat them as you 

 do the first ones. Tlie chances ai'e that the 

 sections given the new colony will be finished 

 long befoic those on the old stock, and very 

 likely the latter will never be finished at all". 

 Just follow up that system, and I promise you 

 will get less than half a crop: and if the season 

 is a very short one you will get little or nothing, 

 when I "may get a very fair retiu-n. 

 * I would rather my bees \\ould not swarm 

 very much, because of the watching and labor 

 involved. But they will swarm, and that right 

 in the midst of the honey harvest, as I presume 

 is the case wherever clover is the principal 

 source of supply. And as I can not prevent it, 

 I have been driven to study and pi'actice meth- 

 ods to ovei'rule it and the effects thereof. I 

 have been so successful, that, so far as the 

 quantity of honey they will give me is concern- 

 ed, I would as lief have my bees swarm as not; 

 and at the same time the incn^ase in size of my 

 apiary is very mode-rate. 



A swarm of bees embraces much the larger 

 share of the field bees of a colony, and are. in 

 fact, mostly of that class. Quite a sprinkling 

 of bees of a younger age are, of course, present: 

 and, when hiv(^d on the old stand, that number 

 and the number of field-bees will be somewhat 

 augmented. All this, together with the fact 

 that being thrown out on their own resources 

 appears to give them an added incentive to ac- 

 tion, puts them in the very best condition to 

 make every lick count. They will accomplish 

 more then foi' a while than at any other period. 



I hive my swarms on some old stand, of 

 course. The original purpose of that was to 

 prevent after-swarms: but it becomes. In fact, 

 but one of its two principal purposes. The 

 other is to get as large and permanent an avail- 

 able force of workers in the new colony as pos- 

 sible. I consider the stock from which a swarm 

 has issued as virtually of no account for comb 

 honey the rest of that season. If they swarm 



