1900 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



685 



use in queen-rearing if such is desired ; and, 

 later, the bees can be returned to the hive 

 from which they came, which, of course, will 

 contain a young queen. I use Danzenbaker 

 bottom-boards with these shallow brood-cham- 

 bers or any flat board with strips nailed on to 

 make a bee-space. The Danzenbaker hive and 

 system is all right ; but when a bee-keeper 

 has all the Dovetailed hives he needs, what is 

 the use of buying an expensive hive for comb- 

 honey production when he can make the ar- 

 rangement I have described for about ten 

 cents each ? We have a number of good 

 teachers on comb honey production. At the 

 head stands Doolittle ; but he does not use 

 our hive ; his teaching is more general. 



that cast swarms in the Browntown yard. 

 Where swarming does not occur, the Dove- 

 tailed hive or the eight-frame Langstroth is 

 all right for comb honey ; but I get no more 

 finished comb honey from those colonies that 

 do not swarm than from those that do ; but 

 there is less work involved. I think Mrs. 

 Barber's method of first giving a set of ex- 

 tracting-conibs is a splendid practice to pre- 

 vent swarming. In some cases I give a set of 

 full depth extracting-combs ; and as soon as 

 they are nearly full I take them away and 

 give them to a weaker colony to ripen, and in 

 their place put two supers of sections contain- 

 ing full starters. The bees, being used to the 

 same amount of space above, will occupy 



A CORNER IN MONROE APIARY. 



Comb-honey work, Dovetailed hives, and shallow brood-chambers; the colony with supers on will be united to 

 the colony in Dovetailed hives at the close of the season. 



Davenport and Mrs. Barber are specific, and 

 they are all right. Among them all, no man 

 knows better than Danzenbaker how to get 

 comb honey. But we can't all adopt his hive, 

 on account of the expense and work of chang- 

 ing. 



But while I have been speaking of the way 

 in which I handle colonies that swarm, I want 

 to say that I have fewer and fewer swarms. 

 When there is a good honey crop I have less 

 than in a year when there is just enough nec- 

 tar to keep brood-rearing going at a good pace. 

 This year, with a fair crop of white clover, 

 and a basswood flow of only three or four 

 days, I had less than 25 per cent of colonies 



both, and finish evenly. Our white-honey 

 harvest is about 75 per cent of a full crop. 

 Browntown, Wis., July 20. 



[I believe that your ideas in the matter of 

 the production of comb honey by the use of 

 shallow brood-chambers, and keeping down 

 increase, are orthodox and sound for some lo- 

 calities Some ten or twelve years ago this 

 general plan was talked of and advocated 

 much more than now. While the scheme is 

 not new, it is worth bringing up at the pres- 

 ent time. .^ ,~ I 



It was Mr. Heddon who, years ago, intimat- 

 ed the possibility of using shallow brood- 



