GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



GENEMAL 



PONDENCE 



BEES ENTERING COMB-HONEY SUPERS 



Tlie Great Advantage of Drawn Commbs Over Full S 



BY R. P. HOLTERMANN 



On page 903, December 15, 1913, Mr. 

 McMurray refers to the natural like or dis- 

 like of bees to working in section-honey 

 supers on account of their subdivided and 

 crowded condition. I have not had the 

 experience he describes, that bees, when 

 given passages of communication, will close 

 them up with wax or propolis. It may be 

 due to locality; but I have found that bees 

 gnaw comb foundation and stop openings 

 when the supers are put on before a sur- 

 plus-honey flow or after the sections and 

 liive are crowded. They may also do it 

 possibly between periods of flow when 

 there is quite a length of time with no 

 nectar coming in. Then, again, when a 

 swarm issues, the bees are ready with a lot 

 of wax scales — material which they can use 

 for comb-building in their new home. If 

 the swarm returns, owing to modern meth- 

 ods of manipulation, that wax may have to 

 be deposited somewhere about the hive. In 

 corroboration of this statement I might say 

 that I have been able to detect the colony 

 that swarmed in my absence by observing 

 the wax deposited by the bees oh the front 

 of the hive. They were simply in a condi- 

 tion where they had secreted and were se- 

 creting wax scales for the comb they ex- 

 pected to build after first alighting to see 

 that the queen was with them, and then, 

 when next clustering, building comb. This 

 second alighting proved to be on the hive, 

 owing to my having previously clipped the 

 queen's wings, and a portion of the wax 

 was deposited by the bees on the front of 

 the hive, and more would be taken care of 

 in the hive. 



THE ADVANTAGE OF DRAVS^N COMBS. 



Bees do not care to go into supers con- 

 taining only comb foundation. This is 

 true whether the foundation is the size of a 

 Langstroth frame, or of the ordinary sec- 

 tion. 



I do not hesitate to say that if the 

 extracted-honey producer has no drawn 

 surplus combs lie will have much more 

 trouble with the swarming impulse; and 

 tlio surplus-honey crop, particularly if 

 measured bv the amount in the supers, will 

 be materially reduced. Drawn comb invites 

 the bees into the supers in a way that 



foundation entirely fails to do. The criti- 

 cal time in the prevention of swarming is 

 when the brood-chamber is near the point 

 of being crowded ; and unless the bees' 

 energies can be successfully diverted to the 

 accejitance of the super as a part of the 

 hive, they are likely to swarm. The differ- 

 ence between drawn comb and foundation 

 in the majority of instances is just enough 

 to turn the scale in favor of swarming. 



When the bees have to draw out founda- 

 tion, they store honey in the brood-chamber 

 which would otherwise have been put in the 

 super, thus depriving the queen of room to 

 lay, with the result already mentioned. At 

 the same time, the worker force is decreased 

 if the flow is prolonged, so that there is a 

 corresponding decrease in the surplus-honej'^ 

 crop. 



After a careful observation of colonies to 

 which foundation was given in the supers, 

 side by side with colonies having drawn 

 comb, I would estimate that, if the former 

 Avould give 75 lbs. of honey in the supers, 

 the latter would as easily give 100 lbs. 



The first year that I began beekeeping 

 afresh, and started with the twelve-frame 

 Langstroth hive, it was a bad (perhaps I 

 should say a good) year for swarming. 

 Some of my help, perhaps myself as well, 

 were not very skillful at detecting queen- 

 c^lls in recesses of comb. I had no drawn 

 comb, and I remember that on one Sunday 

 fifteen swarms issued and clustered togeth- 

 er, and this is an apiary that we were 

 trying to run on the non-swai'ming plan. 



One going into the production of extract- 

 ed honey could well afford to pay 30 or even 

 35 cts. each, or perhaps more, for enough 

 perfect combs to supply half of each ex- 

 tracting-super with such comb. I do not 

 like to put more than two or three sheets of 

 foundation into a twelve-frame super at 

 one time. I am aware that there is a differ- 

 ence in the way in which individual colonies 

 will take such treatment. The honey-flow 

 also makes a difference. I almost believe 

 that, if the hive is on a loose bottom-board, 

 the new super, if it contains only comb 

 foundation, should be put for twenty-four 

 or forty-eight hours under the brood-cham- 

 ber with a queen-excluder between. Local- 

 ities may vary much in this respect ; but 



