656 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. L 



have the bottom edge of the fence so adjusted 

 as to be queen-excluding? " 

 Eden, Erie Co., N. Y., Aug. 6. 



[We can ; and if the rest of the fraternity 

 think well of it we will adopt your sugges- 

 tion. — Ed.] 



THE INVENTOR OF THE QUEEN-EXCLUDER. 



His Giant Hives and Queen-cages, etc. 



BY F. GREINER. 



In his Straws for July 15, Dr. Miller makes 

 mention of the inventor of the queen-exclud- 

 er, Fr. A. Hannemann (wrongly spelled Hahn- 

 nemann). This brings to my mind vividly 

 what Mr. H. wrote in the German papers dur- 

 ing the years 1875, '78, '79, about this inven- 

 tion and the general management of his bees ; 

 and although about twenty years have passed 

 since then, what he said may still be of inter- 

 est to the readers. 



If my memory serves me aright, nothing 

 has ever appeared in relation to the subject in 

 our bee-literature here, so I will speak of Mr. 

 Hannemann, try to give the essentials of his 

 management, and mingle with it some facts 

 and the experiences of others as opportunity 

 may present. 



When Mr. Hannemann wrote his last report 

 for the Bienen Zeitimg, in 1879, he was then 

 a bee-keeper of thirty years' experience. He 

 had made a specialty of apiculture for twenty- 

 six years in the extreme southern part of Bra- 

 zil ; had introduced our common honey-bee 

 into that land, and was the originator of mod- 

 ern bee-keeping there. 



I did not know that, according to Dr. Mil- 

 ler, Hannemann was a tailor by trade ; but it 

 is very evident that he could not have had 

 very much leisure to follow his profession, for 

 he was so extensively engaged in bee-keeping 

 and honey-production that his breeding-stock 

 numbered over 300 colonies, which were al- 

 lowed to swarm at will. From what I have 

 read on and between the lines it would seem 

 to me that all these colonies were kept in sta- 

 tionary hives, perhaps box hives, as we call 

 the hives without frames. Hannemann's aim 

 was, in the first place, to have his colonies 

 swarm all they would, and that was all he ex- 

 pected or asked of them. He called them his 

 stock capital. The young swarms were the 

 interest, so to speak, to be exchanged for hon- 

 ey during the honey season. The hozv will be 

 shown later on. 



Southern Brazil must be well adapted to bee 

 culture. Hannemann spoke of his honey sea- 

 son as lasting from two and a half to three 

 months. For six weeks the secretion is so 

 plenteous that bees will not work on any hon- 

 ey offered them in the open air. I think we 

 might be able to show something with such a 

 honey-flow. I have not seen a day like that 

 here in several years, even when I secured a 

 fair yield. 



The queen-excluder was invented or gotten 

 up for a different purpose from what we use it 

 for now. Hannemann may have been led to 



make his invention on account of many young 

 swarms often going together when swarming 

 at the same time, and he wanting to make a 

 sure thing of it to catch all the queens. At 

 any rate, he constructed a sieve with the view 

 of sifting his bees before hiving them, and so 

 the appliance has been named Hannemann's 

 bee-sieve. In sifting his bees he probably en- 

 countered the difficulty of getting the drones 

 and queens mixed together in a heap ; and the 

 gain by using just the queen-excluding plate 

 proved insufficient for the accomplishment of 

 his object, so he added another sieve having 

 wider passages, with space between the two. 

 This worked well. It separated and secured 

 queens and drones, allowing the workers to 

 pass through. The latter were hived in the 

 peculiar mammoth hives to be described fur- 

 ther on, the drones destroyed, and the queens 

 confined in cages of his own construction. 



This brings us to the second use of the 

 queen-excluding metal, for these cages were 

 made of siic/i (I wonder that the excluding 

 metal has not been used for this purpose 

 by some of our bee-keepers who practice cag- 

 ing during the honey season). Hannemann 

 wanted his queen'^ caged so as to allow the 

 bees to communicate with them unham- 

 pered, hence he made the cages of perforat- 

 ed metal. The unique manner of his man- 

 agement of the young swarms made it strict- 

 ly necessary to have every queen secured. If 

 possible, all the swarms coming in one day 

 were placed in one single mammoth hive. Mr. 

 Hannemann speaks particularly of one daj' in 

 1879, when he had 79 swarms issue, to be ta- 

 ken care of by himself with the help of his 

 three young children, to be sifted, queens 

 caged, and the bees weighed and hived. One 

 giant hive and two barrels accommodated this 

 enormous " pile " of bees. They gave at the 

 end of the season, net, about 1600 lbs. of honey. 



Mr. Hannemann speaks at another time of 

 his " Boss Giant hive " of 50,000 cubic inches, 

 made four stories high, cupboard fashion, with 

 eight hinged doors in the rear, to give access 

 — a hive that harmoniously accommodated 54 

 kilograms of bees (about 11 9>^ lbs.) from 

 which he harvested, at the close of his 2^ 

 months' honey season, 448 kilograms of hon- 

 ey (equal to about 987 lbs.), and 38 lbs. of 

 wax, reckoning a kilogram as 2i"\iVt, pounds. 

 In other words, one or each kilogram of bees 

 was exchanged for 83^ kilograms of honey. 

 Of the 14 caged queens, but 9 were alive when 

 the honey was cut out. 



In 1879 Mr. Hannemann had to take care of 

 700 swarms (young) in two months. His en- 

 tire crop amounted to 15,428 lbs. of honey and 

 1212 lbs. of wax. He stored his honey large- 

 ly in cemented vats, or cisterns. It is aston- 

 ishing, so adds Mr. Hannemann to his report, 

 to think that so much honey could be pro- 

 duced in one locality', especially when taking 

 into consideration the fact that over 300 breed- 

 ing colonies used large but (of course) un- 

 known quantities for breeding besides, and 

 storing their winter supplies at the same time. 

 I would add, it goes to prove that Hanne- 

 mann has a splendid location, perhaps like 

 California or Cuba, although he says that the 



