172 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Mak. 15 



BEE-KEEPING IN THE HIGHLANDS OF 

 MEXICO. 



Carl Ludloff and His Simplex Hive. 



BY O. B. METCALFE. 



Returning now to Mr. Carl Ludloff and 

 his Simplex hive, as he is now manufactur- 

 ing it for sale and his own use at Irapuato, 

 Mex., we have a very good picture of Mr. 

 Ludloff together with his home apiary of 

 Simplex hives. The man in the background 

 is his Mexican helper, who works for the 

 small sum of 75 cents per day and boards 

 himself. I could plainly see that he was 

 nothing but a helper in the real sense of the 

 word; but, even as such, when one considers 

 that his pay is the equivalent of only 37 >^ 

 cents U. S. currency, it certainly is cheap 

 labor. Plenty of such labor may be had, 

 and even cheaper, in Mexico. 



A glance at Fig. 8 suffices to show that 

 this apiary is kept in perfect order. Every 

 thing is neat, clean, and orderly, each hive 

 being well made and perfect of its kind. 

 Seeing this I expected to find the inside of 

 the hives well kept, and so it turned out. 

 While in the apiary with Mr. Ludloff we 

 opened a number of hives, and every one of 

 them showed careful manipulation and a 

 thrifty condition of the bees. On the hive 

 just in front of Mr. Ludloff a little slat can 

 be seen, and on the back of this a small 

 piece of paper. This is one of his score- 

 cards, and each hive has one on which a rec- 

 ord is kept of what it did all through the 

 season. 



Fig. 9 shows three of these Simplex hives. 

 The first and second ones have the shingle 

 water-sheds removed in order to show the 

 cattail-flag mats in position, while the third 

 has this mat removed to show the frames 

 serving the double duty of fiames and inner 

 hive walls. The two end frames are filled 

 with matted bullrush about one inch thick, 

 so as to form ends for the hive. Each hive 

 has 17 frames and 2 division-boards, which 

 are used to contract or expand the space oc- 

 cupied by the bees to suit the size of the col- 

 ony. Thus if a colony needs one or two 

 more frames the division-board is moved 

 over a frame or two. In size the frames are 

 10X15>^ inches, inside measurement, and 

 of a thickness to take one-pound sections. 

 Each frame holds eight sections; and when 

 the apiarist wishes to run for comb honey 

 he places several frames with sections on 

 either side of the brood with one frame of 

 solid capped honey between the sections and 

 the brood. 



In sections Mr. Ludloff uses foundation 

 starters, but nothing of the sort in his brood- 

 frames. In these he uses what he calls a 

 wire starter. This wire starter he makes by 

 stretching a single strand of No. 30 tinned 

 wire across the top of the frame within }i 

 inch of the top-bar. He claims that, with- 

 out fail, they will start the comb along this 

 wire, and I am inclined to believe that it 

 would work in most cases, for I have often 



noticed that the bees draw combs straighter 

 in wired frames than in those without wires, 

 and that they are fond of starting comb any 

 place along horizontal wires. Some will 

 wonder what object there is in finding out 

 new things about starters when every one 

 knows that it pays to use full sheets of foun- 

 dation. But I doubt if full sheets would 

 pay in most places in Mexico. I certainly 

 was surprised to see how little drone brood 

 Mr. Ludloff has in his hives. I could not 

 understand it until he afterward told me 

 that he never kept a queen more than one 

 season. 



Fig. 10 shows a Simplex hive opened up, 

 with a good covering of bees on the brood 

 and honey. It also shows one divisible 

 frame, which is used for making increase, or 

 for sending a small nucleus by express. 

 The entrances, as can be seen in the cuts, 

 are very small; but Mr. Ludloff keeps even 

 these half stopped most of the time, and 

 claims that the lack of ventilation is one of 

 the strong points in his hive for his loca- 

 tion. 



To describe in detail the operation and 

 the many advantages Mr. Ludloff claims 

 for his Simplex hive would take much space. 

 In a few words I will tell how the hive im- 

 pressed me. I feel that it has the good 

 points of being warm and of being easy to 

 handle or manipulate so far as working in 

 the brood-nest is concerned, and that it is 

 evidently cheap of construction. But it 

 seems to me that it would "fall down " in 

 that the place for storing surplus is not 

 above the brood-nest; for, if I understand 

 the bees' nature, they will store honey above 

 thebrood-nest further from itwithout swarm- 

 ing than to one side of it, because the heat 

 which rises from the brood-nest can be used 

 in working the wax. Furthermore, while 

 the manipulation of brood in the Simplex 

 hive would be very easy I do not think the 

 taking-off of honey would be as easily done 

 as in our standard American hive with its 

 super for surplus. However, because of the 

 very high price of lumber in Mexico, and 

 because of the high duty and freight charges 

 on our American hives, the Simplex hive 

 may be the practical one for that country; 

 but I feel sure that the merits of the former 

 as an ideal hive do not justify Mr. Ludloff 

 in the bitter impeachment he is waging in 

 Mexico against them. 



Mr. Ludloff claims that his flow often 

 shuts off very quickly, and that severe rob- 

 bing is the result. For this reason he has 

 made a bee- tent of canvas as shown in Fig. 

 11. Two men can carry it any place with 

 little or no effort, and it looks as though it 

 might be pretty handy and comfortable. It 

 affords a shade as well as protection from 

 the robbers, and has a rack around the walls 

 to hold tools while moving from one hive to 

 another or when not in use. 



The queer cylindrical hive shown in Fig. 

 12 is the kind used by the Mexican bee-keep- 

 ers around Irapuato. They are mostly kept 

 suspended under the eaves of the houses, 

 and the honey is taken from them in the 



