306 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



May 15 



FIG. 1. — W. H. HARDER, ROCHESTER, N. Y. 



Mr. llarber works nights on a newspaper press and spends what time he 



has in the daytime with his bees. 



bow part of the wing, which I did, and I felt 

 relieved when I saw her scamper off as she 

 was put back on the brood-frame. The hive 

 was literally alive with bees, and packed 

 with brood and honey. 



On May 16, at about 11 : ;;o a.m. I received 

 a phone message that the bees were going 

 away, and to come at once. My office is 

 within 200 feet of the house, and I am con- 

 vinced that I did not take more than ten 

 steps to get there. I had previously given 

 careful and frequent instructions to those at 

 home what to do in case of swarming; but 

 the excitement had been too great, and I 

 found the queen was in a neighbor's wife's 

 hands trying to get out between her fingers, 

 where she (the queen) had been shifted 

 from the hands of my wife to allow her to 

 bring out the new hive. I actually believe 



that, had I not arrived 

 as I did, they would 

 have put the ash-box 

 on the old location in- 

 stead of the new hive. 

 I was not as cool as an 

 ice-chest, but I took 

 advantage of the de- 

 moralization and put 

 things aright. The 

 swarm clustered low; 

 and to hasten the re- 

 turn of them to the 

 hive we shook the bees 

 into an apron and 

 dumped them in front 

 of the new hive, and 

 then released the 

 queen. They were all 

 in at 1 P.M. 



Just nine days later 

 I examined the swarm 

 and found every one of 

 the ten full sheets of 

 foundation drawn out 

 so that one could 

 hardly get a lead-pen- 

 cil between. Owing to 

 unfavorable weather 

 conditions it was not 

 until June 10 that I put on an extracting- 

 super to bait the bees above. I left it on for 

 three days, at the end of which period the 

 bees had built out all the foundation nearly 

 two-thirds, and had stored some honey. I 

 then raised the extracting-super and placed 

 a super of section boxes beneath. One day 

 later I put a bee-escape board between and 

 then removed the extracting-super. By the 

 24th of June it became necessary to put on 

 the second super, as the first one was entire- 

 ly filled, including the outside row, and 

 three or four rows of cells in each section 

 were capped. 



The old hive, the second day after the 

 swarm issued, was divided into two five- 

 frame nuclei, the frames being so arranged 

 that each nucleus had five or six queen-cells 

 and an equal share of brood and stores. This 



FIG. 3. 



-COMB HONEY PRODUCED IN ONE MONTH BY A SWARM HIVED ON COMB FOUN- 

 DATION. 



