578 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE 



ERSATIONS WITH 



OOLITTLE 



At Borodino, New York. 



QUESTIONS ANSWERED. 



"Should a beekeeper make his own hives?" 

 Quite a little depends on the man, and 

 more still on the man's pocket-book. If the 

 man has plenty of money, and can see no 

 fun in making hives, then it is well for him 

 to buy his material in the flat, putting it 

 together and nailing it up. This any man 

 or woman should be able to do, the accom- 

 plishment of which should give even a 

 millionaire pleasure. But with the one who 

 has a family to support, and hardly knows 

 how to make both ends meet, the winter 

 evenings and stormy days can be turned into 

 both pleasure and profit by making what 

 hives are needed the coming season, except- 

 ing frame stuff and section material. These 

 parts can hardly be made unless the apiarist 

 has motor power and sawing-machines to do 

 it with. But a fairly good workman with 

 the necessary tools should be able to make 

 all the other parts needed after starting, in 

 any well-regulated apiary. 



But if the man prefers to cut cordwood at 

 75 cents a cord to making hives, as a man 

 once told me he did, then let him cut the 

 wood, by all means. 



" Why do bees tear down and rebuild 

 comb ? My bees have been doing this during 

 May and the first half of June. A beekeep- 

 er living near me said that the bees did this 

 to remove the cocoons in very old combs so 

 that the cells would not be so diminished in 

 size as to cause the workers cradled in them 

 to emerge as dwarfs." 



This beekeeper has mentioned something 

 new to me, and I mistrust that his credited 

 foresight will be new to most of the readers 

 of Gleanings. I am hardly ready to accept 

 his conclusions; for were he right I have 

 combs in my apiary which should have been 

 torn down and renewed long years ago. 

 Forty years ago I purchased some old box 

 hives said to have had bees in them for 

 twenty-five years, and transfeiTed the combs 

 from those hives into Langstroth frames, 

 and only yesterday I ran across one of those 

 frames having this 65-year-old comb in it, 

 and, strange to say, I could not discover 

 that the bees emerging from those cells were 

 any smaller than those emerging from a 

 comb which was drawn from foundation 

 during the season of 1912. 



I have frequently seen combs torn down 

 in the manner mentioned, but it is always, 

 so far as I can see, where the comb has been 

 injured by mold or spoiled pollen, or where 

 the pollen has hardened. Then, once or 



twice in my beekeeping lifetime I have 

 known bees, where I had excluded all drone 

 comb, to tear down the lower corners in a 

 frame or two, septum and all, and build 

 therein drone comb ; and I think I have said 

 in print that I have known bees to tear 

 down worker comb where they had naught 

 else, in order to build drone, so that drones 

 might be reared preparatory to swarming. 

 " How about stimulative feeding? Is it 

 profitable or not? Having a talk with a 

 beekeeper a few days ago he told me what 

 a tedious, troublesome job it was, and after- 

 ward took the trouble to describe and rec- 

 ommend what seemed to me a most trouble- 

 some, dangerous, and ineffectual way of 

 doing it — namely, by feeding in the open 

 air, either by putting out syrup or extracted 

 honey with floats on it, or by hanging out in 

 the trees partly filled combs of honey." 



The plan given you was one of the worst 

 ever put before the public, for two reasons : 

 First, such a mode of feeding incites rob- 

 bing. At no time should sweets of any kind 

 be left exposed to the bees, and especially 

 in any time of scarcity of nectar from the 

 fields. Nothing so incites robbing as do 

 exposed sweets when the flowers are yield- 

 ing no nectar. In my early apicultural life, 

 two frames having honey were left careless- 

 ly standing outside a hive when a call for 

 help from a neighbor took me away for two 

 hours. This caused the cleaning-out of four 

 colonies, and demoralized the whole apiary 

 for days thereafter, till the nectar secretion 

 began again. This one lesson was enough 

 for me, and has been profited by ever since. 

 Second, by such a method of feeding, 

 those colonies that need the least will get 

 the most of the feed; and those that need 

 the most get little benefit. Of course, there 

 is such a thing as a colony strong in brood 

 and bees being short of honey ; but the rule 

 is that the weakling will be both short in 

 bees and honey, and get very little of the 

 feed given in the open air. So if stimulative 

 feeding is resorted to, it should be done in 

 the hive, with an eye to the wants of each 

 colony. 



But I am satisfied that stimulative feeding 

 does not pay. Do not misunderstand me. I 

 do not say that it is of no benefit, but that 

 it does not pay. Each colony ought to have 

 plenty of stores ; and if it has, feeding will 

 add but little to the amount of brood reared, 

 and may encumber the brood-chamber to the 

 detriment of maximum numbers at time of 

 harvest. 



