1900 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



729 



some of the bees, having gone to the bottom 

 of the hive and found no ready means of es- 

 caping there, will start for the top again. 



Before this begins, take off the upper story 

 and set it aside. You may be tolerably cer- 

 tain that the queen is not in it, though if the 

 bees are yellow Italians she will sometimes re- 

 main there. 



Withe ut any delay, now blow a litile more 

 smoke over the top of the lower story, then at 

 once pick the hive up and shake the bees out 

 of it. As there is little or no honey in this 

 stor)^, it is easily handled. If you do not see 

 the queen at once, shake the bees that are on 

 the bottom board into the heap in front of the 

 hive. Pat the hive together and watch the 

 bees as thej- go into it, using a little smoke to 

 scatter any bunches in which she miglit hide. 



I have said nothing yet about what you are 

 to shake the bees on. If the ground is smooth 

 and clean for two feet in front of the entrance 

 3'ou can get along without any thing else. It 

 will be better, though, to lay down two bot- 

 tom-boards or covers, a large piece of paper, 

 or a sheet, to shake them on.* 



Much better than any of these is the " find- 

 ing-box " that I use. In its latest improved 

 form it consists of a rim of boards — that is, a 

 box without bottom or top, 20x40, and 5 inch- 

 es deep. Instead of a bottom this has a sheet 

 of perforated zinc fastened about midway be- 

 tween the bottom and top of the rim. On a 

 level with this zinc, on one side, a strip an 

 inch wide is cut out of one end of the box, the 

 opening thus left being covered with perforat- 

 ed zinc. 



On the upper edges a strip of tin is nailed, 

 projecting inward a quarter of an inch. This 

 is to keep the bees from crawling over the 

 edges. 



If the ground in your apiary is level, and 

 all the hives the same height from the ground, 

 you can make your box so that the zinc is on 

 the same level as the bottom-board. Other- 

 wise, two strips of strap iron bent at right an- 

 gles, and nailed to the end of the box so that 

 they may rest on the front edge of the bot- 

 tom-board, will serve to keep it on the same 

 level. 



In using this finding-box the hive is lifted 

 from the bottom-board and set crosswise on 

 the back end of the finding-box before the 

 bees are smoked down. When the bees are 

 shaken into the box a large proportion of them 

 immediately go through the bottom, where 

 they remain, making it much easier to find 

 the queen among those that remain on top. 



The finding box that I have used for the 

 past four years, and on which I have found 

 hundreds of queens, consisted simply of three 

 wood-zinc honey-boards placed side by side 

 with a lath nailed across the ends to keep 

 them together, and with legs to hold it two or 

 three inches above the ground. 



I had six queens to introduce a few days 

 ago. The queens they were to replace were in 

 full colonies of hybrids, all working in supers; 

 and as it was a showery day, all or nearly all 

 the bees were at home. I took note of the 

 time it took to find the queen in each, which 

 was four, two, six, eight, six, and three min- 



utes respectively, or an average of a little less 

 than five minutes each. This covered the en- 

 tire operation of opening the hive, finding the 

 old queen, introducing the new one, and clos- 

 ing up the hive again. 



This finding-box is almost as useful, no 

 matter what kind of hive you have. If you 

 can not shake the bees out of your hive all at 

 once you can shake them off a frame at a time. 

 Move your hive to one side and put an empty 

 one in its place, with the finding-box in posi- 

 tion in front of it. As you remove each frame, 

 glance quickly over both sides of it. If you 

 do not see the queen, shake or brush all the 

 bees off into the box and place the frame in 

 the new hive. In this way you combine the 

 advantages of the ordinary method with all 

 the certainty of this one. 



Another method, of which I have made a 

 great deal of use in past years, is that of driv- 

 ing. We often read of the exhibitions given 

 by English societies, where prizes are given to 

 those who can soonest drive out the bees and 

 find the queen of a colony in an ordinary box 

 or straw hive ; but the method appears to have 

 become almost a lost art in this country. In 

 transferring black bees from box hives I have 

 found it an easy matter, generally, to find the 

 queen while the bees were being driven out of 

 the old hive. I could nearly always find the 

 queen in this way in less time, on an average, 

 than it would have taken to hunt her up in a 

 frame hive in the ordinary way. Remember- 

 ing this I have used the same method with 

 success with frame hives and with other races 

 of bees. I once bought a lot of bees which 

 were a mixture of Cyprians, Syrians, and Ital- 

 ians. Any one who has ever tried these races 

 does not need to be told that they were cross. 

 Moreover, the queens were very shy, and the 

 frames were very hard to handle (they were in 

 what I believe you call Draper barns now), so 

 that the queen would almost invariably be 

 found on the last frame, or down in the cor- 

 ners of the hive somewhere. I tried finding 

 the queen by driving, and found that I could 

 almost always find them in less than half the 

 time it took to find them by handling the 

 frames. Neither did I get as many stings, nor 

 were the combs exposed to robbers, as was 

 more or less unavoidable by the ordinary 

 method. 



To find the queen in this way I would un- 

 cover the brood-chamber (in case it was a box 

 hive, invert the hive), then place over it the 

 hive cap or any box about the size of the top 

 of the hive, resting one edge on the back end 

 of the hive, raising the front side with the left 

 hand, so that I could see into the box and see 

 the bees as they went into it. Then by smok- 

 ing at the entrance, and pounding on the side 

 of the hive, I would very soon have the bees 

 moving into the driving-box, the queen being 

 easily seen as she went up. I have not had 

 any occasion to do any driving since I invent- 

 ed the finding box, but it will be readily seen 

 that it is a valuable adjunct to the driving 

 process, as, if the queen is not found while the 

 bees are going up, she can be strained out by 

 dumping the bees into the box, just as though 

 you were shaking them from the combs. 



