1900 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



before explained. Possibly the pollen-stains 

 and saliva stains have been confused for one 

 and the same thing. — Ed ] 



XON-SWARMING BEES. 



Have we Succeeded in Getting Them Yet ? 



BY W. W. SOMERFORD. 



I am surprised to see so much in your col- 

 ximi.s in regard to the "possibility" of pro- 

 ducing a noti-swarniing race of bees, and at 

 the same time have good honey-hustlers. I 

 was of the opinion that that fact had long ago 

 been settled by all bee-keepers who had had 

 miich experience with bees. The swarming 

 impulse, so far as my experience goes, has 

 about bt en bred out of the best bees now off- 

 ered by all our standard queen-breeders. 



I had evidence so strong to prove it, since 

 coming here last October, that I will never 

 doubt it again ; nor could any one else, situat- 

 ed as I was, having one small apiary of mod- 

 ern bees, from the States, and one apiary of 

 about the same size that had the pure native 

 Cuban black bee that has made Cuba so famous 

 for honey and wax for the last three or four 

 centuries. Those same black or brown bees 

 were robbed at no time m-^re than once or 

 twice a year, while with modern management 

 twelve superfuls a year would have been the 

 result, or more I put said bees into frame 

 hives, furnished them combs and foundation 

 in plenty, and gave them plenty of room and 

 attention, and should have gotten honey. But 

 I didn't. After the cool weather was over I 

 got only swarms — swarms from sunrise till 

 sundown. I handled them to the best of my 

 ability ; but after January I got only swarms, 

 and supers full of brood. 



I was using ten-frame hives, and lots of them 

 had brood touching the top bars in the top 

 stories — no room for honey, and no idea of 

 getting any except enough to feed their brood 

 on^-a worthless strain of bees except to store 

 honey in coot iveather in December and Janu- 

 ary. While those native bees were cutting 

 such swarming and brood rearing capers my 

 modern-bred non-swarming bees were filling 

 their supers solid with honev every seven or 

 eijjbt davs. and kept on doing it until May, and 

 not a swarm from any of them until the hon- 

 ey-flow slacked off — until thev could find noth- 

 ing to do but swarm ; and then only two out 

 of 'he lot swarmed, and all were boom'ng col- 

 onies. All my modern-bred bees did the same 

 thing — hustle in the honey, not swarm to 

 deith, as that trait was positively bred out of 

 them vears aeo — so much so that the question 

 as to the possibility of breeding out swarming 

 is, I consider, a settled one, and I learn from 

 my friend Mr. Howe, Mr. Coggshall's old 

 " lightning operator," that that fact is a part 

 (the greater part too) of Mr. C.'s success. 

 He uses bees that store hone3% not swarm ac- 

 cording to "nature," as some suggest; and 

 when Mr C. gets "by buying" a ranch of 

 those natural swarmers, "swarms is all he 

 gets until requeening the outfit." 

 Caimeto, Cuba. 



inV^"'! 



MANAGING SWARMS HAVING CUPPED QUEENS. 



"Say, Brother Doolittle, I am having trou- 

 ble with my swarms which have clipped wings, 

 and I came over this afternoon to have a little 

 talk with you about the matter, to see if you 

 can not tell us something more about it than 

 you did in the May 15th number of Gi,ean- 



INGS." 



" Well, Brother Swift, I will do the best I 

 can to help you ; but you should always bear 

 in mind that no person can well get all of the 

 minutiae of any thing into one number of a 

 bee paper. What seems to be the trouble? " 



" In the first place I did not seem to be able 

 to get the bees to alight on the swarm-catcher 

 having the caged queen in it. I held it up in 

 the air in the thickest of the bees, but they 

 paid no attention to it, but went right to clus- 

 tering on a limb of a tree." 



" They will sometimes persist in doing this ; 

 and to overcome this part of the matter I some- 

 times hold the catcher close up in front of the 

 hive where the bees are issuing, so as to catch 

 a pint or so, when the cover is shut over these 

 bt-es and the caged queen. Now hold it up in 

 the air, as spoken of in a former number of 

 Gleanings, and the bees in the catcher, to- 

 gether wish those in the cage, will fan their 

 wings, which lells those in the air that they 

 have found the queen and are clustering about 

 her, when, as a rule, with me, the swarm will 

 at once begin to cluster on the swarm-catcher. 

 However, some swarms seem bound to cluster 

 on the limb of a tree ; and where this is so, as 

 soon as from one-fourth to one-half have clus- 

 tered I open the catcher,- leaving the caged 

 queen inside, catch what has clustered in the 

 catcher, closing the cover. I now leave the 

 catcher with the bees inside till all of the bees 

 which are outside cluster on it, when they are 

 taken and hived the same as a swarm from a 

 limb " 



" But suppose you do not find the queen be- 

 fore the bees have all ceased to leave the hive, 

 how do you then get the bees to tell the others 

 the queen is in the catcher ? " 



"If the bees all get out before I find the 

 queen, then I allow them to start to cluster, 

 and proceed as before. Or I sometimes hold 

 the catcher in front of the entrance before I 

 find the queen, if I do not see her readily, and, 

 after findmg the queen, I slip the cage con- 

 taining her in with the bees." 



" Do you ever have any trouble from the 

 bees not clustering on the limb or on the catch- 

 er, but returning while you are trying to get 

 them ? " 



" Yes, I have had them return without clus- 

 tering anywhere." 



" And did they always go back to their own 

 hive? or did they scatter all about, entering 

 wrong hives and getting killed to the amount 

 of half or more of the swarm ? " 



' ' Sometimes they are inclined to enter wrong 



