262 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



May 1 



cost of hives was concerned, to adopt the 

 eight-frame rather than the ten-frame hive, 

 because an eight-frame hive would not have 

 to be contracted Uke the ten-frame. At 

 that time many ot the ten-frame users who 

 were running for comb honey were putting 

 dummies in their hives, just wide enough 

 to take up the space of two frames; and, 

 naturally, many believed that it was a 

 waste of money to make a hive two frames 

 wider than was ever needed. 



Witness the change. The last 25 years 

 of actual experience, in localities all over 

 the United States and Canada, have shown 

 clearly, if they have ever shown any thing, 

 that contraction is nicer in theory than 

 in practice. Experience has shown that 

 queens do not like to lay eggs next to the 

 outside walls of the hive. 



Now, please don't understand us as say- 

 ing that a queen will never fill eight frames 

 in an eight-frame hive; for she does do it 

 many times in some parts of the season, 

 and perhaps she may do it as a rule in 

 some localities where it never gets very cold. 

 But in our northern localities in the spring, 

 just when we want all the brood that fhe 

 colony can care for, she is quite mclined to 

 avoid the outside frames; and these outside 

 frames ought to have honey and pollen in 

 them if we expect brood-rearing to proceed 

 properly. 



We are aware that some good men will 

 oppose this general proposition; but we ask 

 why is it, when all the bee-supply catalogs 

 and some bee-books have been favoring the 

 eight-frame size, that the ten frame has 

 been steadily gaining patrons? and why is 

 i^ to-day that nearly two-thirds of all the 

 hives sold have ten frames rather than 

 eight? Quoting again from G rover Cleve- 

 land, it is "not a theory but a condition'' 

 that confronts us. The logic of hard stub- 

 born /ac^s that are worth more than many 

 volumes of theory should show the new in- 

 vestors what hive to buy. 



LESSONS THAT CAN BE LEARNED FROM 

 MISTAKES IN THE POULTRY BUSINESS; 

 THE IMPORTANCE OF MAKING A BEGIN- 

 NING ON A SMALL SCALE WITH EITHER 

 BEES OJR CHICKENS. 



As we have mentioned before, beginners 

 are constantly writing to us, asking our ad- 

 vice as to whether they could succeed if 

 they bought out an apiary of so many col- 

 onies, etc. Time and again we have re- 

 plied, cautioning such beginners against 

 buying up a lot of bees at once. .Just as 

 much can be learned with two or three col- 

 onies as with fifteen or twenty; and the 

 mistakes the first year, which are sure to 

 come, will be far less costly. Later on, in- 

 crease can be made as the bee-keeper learns 

 more about the business; but it is usually 

 a wise rule to let the bees pay their way. 



The gigantic failures in the poultry busi- 

 ness should serve as a warning to bee-keep- 

 ers. This point has been mentioned before; 

 but just at this time of the year, when many 



are considering going into the bee-business, 

 it is well to refer to it agatn. A man who 

 has twenty- five chickens, too often gets the 

 idea that his profit would be two hundred 

 times as great if he had five hundred; and 

 so he launches out, builds buildings, buys 

 a lot of incubators, sets them all going at 

 once without having had the training from 

 any previous experience; and then, after 

 losing all he has invested, he gives up the 

 poultry business, claiming- that it does not 

 pay, when, in reality, it would have paid if 

 he had increased gradually and learned as 

 he went. 



The bee-keeper is no exception to this 

 rule. Those who build the greatest castles 

 in the air, and who have visions of getting 

 rich quick, usually become disgusted after 

 a while, and give up bee-keeping with the 

 verdict that there is no money in it. All 

 this time the thousand's of conservative 

 men (and women too, for that matter) who 

 had sense enough to increase only as their 

 experience warrants, are making good and 

 staying by the business year after year. 



One reason why so many fail in the poul- 

 try business is that they spend their money 

 for complicated and expensive buildings 

 and pieces of apparatus in the shape of 

 drinking-fountains, feeding-devices, trap- 

 nests, anti-this, that, and the other, when 

 something costing practically nothing 

 would answer just as well. It takes a lot 

 of eggs at fifteen cents a dozen to pay for a 

 $5000 poultry-plant. 



A good many bee-keepers, too, are spend- 

 ing their time and money in getting up 

 machines and complicated outfits for per- 

 forming simple manipulations. On page 

 238, April 15, :^lr. Louis H. SchoU describes 

 a reel turned with a crank, for winding wire 

 to use in wiring frames and cutting it in 

 proper lengths. We do not wonder that 

 Mr. Scholl was puzzled to know what it 

 was used for. We venture to say that, if 

 this bee-keeper had spent half the time re- 

 quired for making the machine in winding 

 wire around a board of the proper length by 

 hand, he could have had enough wire cut 

 up the right length for twice the number of 

 frames he was making. In all the thou- 

 sands of frames that we wire, we wind the 

 wire on the board by hand — we do not need 

 any machine. 



.just the other day we received by express 

 a large box containing a complete outfit for 

 use in wiring frames. There were carefully 

 adjusted springs for holding the frame in 

 place, a reel for the spool of wire, a friction 

 arrangement to keep the spool from un- 

 winding, thus snarling up the wire, and a 

 number of other attachments that could be 

 used. In spite of all this machinery we use 

 nothing but our two hands and a pair of 

 pliers when we wire frames, and we think 

 we can do the work pretty fast too. 



Before spending dollars for a machine 

 that can be used but a few minutes a year, 

 see if cents and sense can not be used to 

 better advantage on labor in doing the 

 work by hand. 



