1890 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



11 



America, we need not be surprised that the 

 attendance at bee-keepers' conventions there 

 is so much better than here. 

 Naples, N. Y., Nov. 30, 1898. 



[If we could have government support, and 

 if, in addition, the government owned the rail- 

 roads, so that we could get low rates ; if we 

 could temporarily shrink Uncle Sam's do- 

 mains to cut down mileage, perhaps we could 

 have big conventions. It is easy to see why 

 the Germans beat us on their large gatherings. 

 —Ed.] 



DOOUTTLE ANSWERS DR. MILLER. 



Egg-laying of Queens Dependent upon the Kind of 

 Honey Produced. 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



I supposed I had annihilated that "arena" 

 fitted up for Dr. M. and myself to fight in ; 

 but it seems that the good (?) doctor is bound 

 to fight with Doolittle anyway, as a Straw (p. 

 869) in December 1st Gleanings would de- 

 note. After telling what Dr. E. Gallup says 

 about a queen of his occupying 24 Gallup 

 frames fully with brood, Bro Miller wants to 

 know how I reconcile that with a statement I 

 made, that 9 Gallup frames entertain the best 

 queens to their fullest capacity as to egg-lay- 

 ing, and if Dr. Gallup's queen did not need 

 nearly three times as much room. Well, my 

 dear doctor, had you read the bee-papers more 

 carefully during the past, and remembered 

 what you read, you would have known that 

 Gallup's 24-frame hive was worked for extract- 

 ed honey, while Doolittle was talking about 

 hives worked for cotnb honey. But I think I 

 hear the doctor saying, ' ' Has the working of 

 a hive for extracted honey any thing to do 

 with the capacity of the queen for egg-laying ? 

 or does the working for comb honey decrease 

 her capacity any ? ' ' his eyes giving that pecul- 

 iar twinkle they have at times when he is 

 thinking to himself, "Guess I have got you 

 this time." Dr. M., let me tell you some- 

 thing. I am not going back through musty 

 volumes of old bee-journals to hunt the mat- 

 ter up to get exact figures, but shall tell it 

 from memory. Up to 1874 I had thought that 

 9 Gallup frames would entertain the best queen 

 to her fullest capacity, no matter whether the 

 colony was worked for extracted or comb hon- 

 ey ; for up to that time that was the greatest 

 number allowed when working for either. In 

 the spring of 1874 I read upon the (Adair) 

 Long Idea hive, and became infatuated with 

 the same. I made two of them, working one 

 for extracted honey and the other for comb, 

 these hives being made to hold 32 Gallup 

 frames when the whole number was in. I se- 

 lected two average colonies out of my nine- 

 frame hives ; and when the nine frames were 

 pretty well covered with bees, and brood in 

 some six or seven of the combs, I set each 

 over into these four-foot hives. At the same 

 time I selected another colony of about the 

 same grade, to be worked for extracted honey 

 on the tiering-up plan, and one to be worked 

 for comb honey on the nine-frame "side and 



top box " plan I had used before. In due 

 time the two long hives were filled out with 

 the full 32 combs, with sections on the one for 

 comb honey, and extracting going on every 

 third or fourth day from the other/as used to 

 be the style under which extracting was done. 

 In the tiered-up hive, the queen was kept on 

 the 9 frames by means of a slatted honey- 

 board, and the one worked on the side and 

 top-box plan manipulated as well as Doolittle 

 knew how. Now for the result : Before the 

 basswood harvest arrived, the queen in the 

 long hive, worked for extracted honey, had 

 brood in every one of the 32 combs, to the 

 amount of some 18 or 20 combs//*// of brood ; 

 while the one worked for comb honey, having 

 32 combs, had brood in only 13 combs, the 

 same amounting to only about 9 frames full, 

 the rest of the combs being partly occupied 

 with honey, which ought to have gone in the 

 sections, and would have gone there had this 

 queen had only the 9 combs for her brood- 

 nest. So the queen from the extracting-hive 

 was laying about 5000 eggs daily, as Dr. Mil- 

 ler says, to where the one in the comb-honey 

 hive was giving only about 2500, each evident- 

 ly laying to her fullest capacity. What made 

 the difference ? There is something about ex- 

 tracting honey that causes bees to feed a queen 

 in such a way i hat she will give double the 

 eggs, if she has comb room, that she will when 

 no extracting is done, and thus a queen is 

 coaxed to produce and develop all the embryo 

 eggs she has in her ovaries, in the shortest 

 possible time, while under normal circumstanc- 

 es she will be laying up to her fullest capacity 

 when not producing half the number of eggs 

 she does under the stimulating influences 

 which come from extracting. 



All four of these queens were reared during 

 the swarming season of 1873, so they were 

 less than a year old when the experiment was 

 commenced ; but the one in the long extract- 

 ing-hive died of old age that same fall, while 

 the other three lived and did good work the 

 next season. I have tried nearly the same 

 thing several times since, and proven to my 

 entire satisfaction that a queen will occupy 

 double the number of combs with brood, 

 where extracting is being carried on, as often 

 as the combs are filled with honey, that she 

 will when her colony is worked for comb hon- 

 ey. 



In passing I will note that the hive worked 

 for extracted honey on the long-idea plan gave 

 566 lbs. surplus, while the one worked on the 

 tiering-up plan gave about 400 lbs., thus show- 

 ing that I had only 166 lbs. more honey as a 

 result for double the brood reared. The long 

 hive worked for comb honey gave only about 

 50 lbs. of section honey, with the 32 combs 

 nearly solid full of honey, while the one work- 

 ed on the side and top storing plan gave 309 

 lbs. of section honey, with enough below to 

 winter the colony on. The average from the 

 whole apiary that year was 166% pounds from 

 each old colony in the spring, all of which 

 was comb honey, excepting that from the two 

 colonies worked for extracted, the whole num- 

 ber in the apiary in the spring being 69. 



Now just a word more : I do not get, on an 



