JUNE 15, 1914 



queen every time. Since jiractieing intro- 

 ducing young queens in half of the colonies 

 each season, we have very few but aie ready 

 for the supers when clover begins to yield. 

 When we let them all have their own way a 

 good many colonies amount to next to noth- 

 ing for surplus, which is certainly a great 

 loss. Suppose the apiarist had purchased 

 queens at one dollar each for such colonies 

 the year previous, the differences in yield 

 might have been 100 lbs. per colony. The 

 above has been verified in our apiary. 



The first Italian queen that we introduced 

 in our apiary of black bees was purchased 

 of A. I. Root, I think, 32 years ago; and 

 how anxiously I watched for the first young 

 Italian bees to fly! What a contrast they 



467 



presented to the blacks! The bees from tliat 

 queen filled a super of choice honey from 

 the second crop of clovers, besides a gi-eat 

 plenty to winter on. I think queens might 

 be compared to hens as to laying, as a hen 

 after the first j'ear lays fewer eggs each 

 succeeding year. It is just as unprofitable 

 to keep a hen over two years as a queen. 

 Then, again, the condition of the brood- 

 chamber of a prolific queen is such as to 

 keep the queen busy occupying the cells, as 

 the hundreds of young bees are vacating 

 them, which has a tendency to prevent con- 

 gestion in the brood-chamber, and causing 

 more work in the supers, and more capac- 

 ity, all of which lessens swarming, 

 Honeoye Falls, N. Y. 



THE CONTROL OF 



SWAKMING AT OUT-APIAI 

 TRACTED HONEY 



ls run for ex 



BY R. F. HOLTERMANN 



The article on the above subject by J. L. 

 Byer, page 337, May 1, which has very 

 many excellent points, impels me to say 

 something more upon the same subject. It 

 does not require much of a confession on 

 Mr. Byer's jDart to admit that he cannot 

 prevent swarming "with all kinds of hives.'' 

 , The hive, its size and construction, has a 

 great deal to do with the swarming impulse. 

 With an eight-frame Langstroth hive it is 

 practically impossible to control swarming 

 unless with much extra manipulation; in 

 fact, the hive has to become a divisible- 

 brood-chamber hive, part of the brood in 

 one story and a part in another, with the 

 consequent necessity of looking up the 

 queen -cells in the upper story, for the risk 

 of hatching queen-cells is too great to allow 

 a. man of common sense to take for granted 

 there are none there. Others things being 

 equal, the smaller the hive the greater the 

 danger of swarming. 



THE ENTRANCE. 



Then the entrance to the hive may influ- 

 ence swarming. In going through the coun- 

 try I have often noticed that the entrances 

 are about 4 inches wide and the usual depth, 

 with the bees clustered there idle. Why? 

 Either because the day is hot, and there is 

 not sufficient ventilation to enable the bees 

 to remain inside, or because there is not 

 sufficient storage room. Such entrances were 

 common thirty years ago, but they are 

 neither common nor proper to-day. 



All through the surplus-honey flow my 

 hives have an entrance iVs inches deep, tjie 

 full width of the hive. With a hive of this 

 kind, and with ample super room, if Mr. 



Byer can teach me how " one soon gets to 

 know from external conditions, by the prog- 

 ress being made in supers, and in various 

 other ways, how to diagnose pretty well 

 without tearing into the center of the brood- 

 nest at every visit," I will confess I cannot 

 I am running about 800 colonies this sea- 

 son; and although I am supposed to be a 

 man who grasps details in business, and is 

 the bane of the employee who does not, yet 

 I confess that, with all those bees, except in 

 isolated cases, individuality in colonies is 

 lost; and from week to week to compare 

 progress in storing is almost entirely lost, 

 unless after the first cells have been broken. 

 I doubt its practicability in any case unless 

 at the last of the probable flow. I give 

 enough room for storage to cover any possi- 

 bility in the direction of a flow, yet the 

 quantity of emjity sjDace in a hive varies too 

 much to make the comparison of remaining 

 space a safe guide. 



A well-managed colony with proper en- 

 trance and proper surplus room does not 

 show by " lying out " that it is going to 

 swarm, and this is particularly and most 

 emphatically true of Carniolan bees. 



Every week Ave look through every colony 

 for queen-cells ; and again and again, in a 

 twelve-frame brood-chamber, after looking 

 through ten out of twelve combs, and taking 

 it for granted that there are no cells in the 

 remainder, we have been mistaken; so my 

 instruction to students is, " examine every 

 comb." And after all that is done we have 

 dozens of times found a queen-cell in the 

 upper story at the bottom of a comb of solid 

 honey — the cell just above the queen-ex- 



