1898 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



649 



of those tunnels that have been driven into the 

 mountain for the development of water, wa- 

 ter, beautiful water. 



Of the forty-one hives shown, ten are in the 

 Hoffman frames and the rest are in the Hed- 

 don hive ; and here it may be just as well for 

 me to state just what my feelings are upon 

 the hive question. Before leaving my Eastern 

 home I had tried several styles of hives, and 

 had finally worked up to 100 Heddon hives, 

 and had better success with them than with 

 any other hive I had used. Up to that time I 



rambler's apiary. 



had never used the L. frame; and if I had, 

 perhaps I should have had the same success, 

 or I might have had the same success with 

 the later Hoffman hive and frame. 



Since I came to California, seven years ago, 

 I have managed bees in a great variety of 

 hives; and through all of the experiences 

 there has been a hankering for the trial of the 

 Heddon hive on this coast; so when I com- 

 menced to collect an apiary of my own it was 

 but natural that I should give that hive the 



preference ; this preference with me is prob- 

 ably as deep-seated as is Doolittle's for the 

 Gallup frame, or Dadant for his jumbos, or 

 Sam Green for his box hives. We all have a 

 certain measure of success according as we 

 have learned to handle our hives. 



My apiary is something on the experimental 

 order; for, aside from the Hoffman hives, I 

 have two sizes of the Heddon, the regular 

 eight-frame, and later I have constructed quite 

 a number containing ten frames. By storify- 

 ing the latter I can make a veritable jumbo 

 hive. 



There must be a limit to the 

 size and shape of the frame we 

 use; but the bee-keeping fra- 

 ternity will probably never 

 agree as to the exact size. 



The Langstroth frame, or 

 frames of that dimension, un- 

 doubtedly give the most uni- 

 versal satisfaction. Some of 

 us, however, think we find an 

 advantage in using a different 

 size, and I have seen extract- 

 ing-supers with frames even 

 smaller than the Heddon; 

 and, on the other hand, there 

 are frames so large that it is 

 troublesome work to shake the 

 bees from them. While I can 

 use the L. frame, and like it, 

 I have several reasons for pre- 

 ferring the shallow fixed-dis- 

 tance super; and I am quite 

 sure I would use them even 

 upon a jumbo brood-cham- 

 ber; but in this article I wish 

 to call attention to only one 

 feature that embodies a new 

 plan for clearing the super of 

 bees. 



I have never taken kindly 

 to brushing bees from the 

 combs when extracting, and 

 have tried to devise means to 

 overcome it. I have given the 

 Porter V)ee-escape a thorough 

 trial, and, while it works fairly 

 well, it is not rapid enough. 

 We have to wait several hours 

 for the bees to escape. Place 

 the escape on at night and 

 the bees are out in the morn- 

 ing, provided there is no brood 

 nor queen in the super. In 

 that case we have to resort to 

 the brush in spite of the es- 

 cape. In this State the nights 

 are usually so cool that the 

 honey gets cooled off before morning, and it 

 does not flow from the comb as freely as when 

 taken from the hot hive. What we need for 

 making the bees escape is something that will 

 act immediately. 



In the use of the close-fitting shallow super, 

 I have devised and successfully used what I 

 term 3.joiincer. When we shake an ordinary 

 frame a good share of the bees are thrown off. 

 If the comb is old and strong, and we jounce 

 the frame against a solid object, nearly all of 



J 



