AUGUST 15, 1914 



623 



CONVEESATIONS WITH DOOLITTLE 



Alt Borodimo, New York. 



LARGE HIVES AND POPULOUS COLONIES. 



" I have been using the eight-frame hive, 

 but do not have the success with it that some 

 of you older ones tell about. Talking with 

 quite a prominent beekeeper not long ago 

 lie said this hive is too small, and that I 

 would do better to use a larger one or else 

 two eight-frame hives, one on top of the 

 other. Large hives give rousing colonies, 

 and these yield large crops of honey, mind- 

 ing their own business and not swarming.'' 



Well, I tliink one can hardly say that 

 successful beekeeping is a matter of adding 

 one, two, three, or even four stories to an 

 eight-frame hive. The question of large 

 colonies depends quite a little on how the 

 bees winter, and the age and vitality of the 

 queen. With a poor queen, or a weak colo- 

 ny in early spring, the adding of an upper 

 stoiy would be worse than useless. It would 

 be far better to confine the bees to the combs 

 they can occupy than to add an upper story, 

 thus utilizing the warmth created by these 

 bees in the upper hive while the brood is in 

 the lower one. I am well aware that the 

 bees can form a cluster around the brood 

 they have, and hold it from perishing, even 

 if all "outdoors" surrounds them; but 

 much more honey will be consumed, and 

 brood-rearing will go on to a greater disad- 

 vantage than would be the case had the 

 colony a hive small enough to suit their 

 wants. With a rousing colony and a good 

 queen, a gain in bees can be made by adding 

 an upi^er story to the hive the bees wintered 

 in just before it becomes full of brood; but 

 if comb honey is wanted, I should consider 

 it advisable to use ten-frame hives; and, 

 when adding another ten- frame hive, to put 

 a queen-excluder between the two, in order 

 to keep the queen in the lower story. It 

 looks as if the beekeeper you talked with 

 believed that in some hidden or mysterious 

 way that extra story added to the numerical 

 strength of the colony. Let us look at this : 



To keep eight Langstroth combs full of 

 brood any queen must lay about 2500 eggs 

 daily, continuously. That would mean 

 enough bees to give a heavy swarm about 

 every two weeks. Previous to the height of 

 the clover and basswood season, not one 

 queen in fifty will do that. To keep ten 

 frames full of brood, a continuous daily 

 average of about 3000 eggs must be deposit- 

 ed, which would give a rousing swarm every 

 eleven days. Scarcely one queen in a thou- 

 sand will dO' this, pre\aous to the time when 

 such great numbers would be of any value 



to the beekeeper as a source of comb-honey 

 production, coming as it does at the time of 

 great dearth of nectar between basswood 

 and buckwheat. Probably your beekeeper 

 would tell you that, with these two or three 

 story hives, brood would be found in fifteen 

 or twenty frames. Doubtless this is true; 

 but eight combs solid full of brood in a 

 single hive are of more value to the comb- 

 honey producer than twenty combs having 

 the same amount of brood (but scattered), 

 in which the bees have had a chance to store 

 the larger part of the white honey which 

 should have gone into the sections. Eight 

 frames filled with worker comb will accom- 

 modate the best of queens, and enable them 

 to have every cell for egg-laying. An 

 eight-frame hive will not give her such use. 



When the queen has brood to the amounc 

 of seven combs full in this ten-frame hive, 

 put on a queen-excluder, and on top of that 

 put another hive containing ten other frames 

 filled with worker comb. You will in this 

 way retard swarming till the nectar from 

 clover is at its best. Then by putting the 

 upper hive in place of the lower one with 

 two section-sui3ers on top, and by shaking 

 the queen and all of the bees off their brood 

 and out of the hive they wintered in, you 

 will have the maximum number of bees in 

 shape to give the best possible yield of 

 section honey from clover and basswood, as 

 the clover honey vv'hich has so far been 

 stored in the upper hive will now be carried 

 into the sections to give the queen place for 

 her eggs. This honey, together with the 

 nectar coming from the fields, will fill the 

 sections as by magic if the nectar continues. 

 But lest any one is led to think that all he 

 needs to do is to "hold the dish and catch the 

 porridge " in the manner above given, allow 

 me to say that, up to the time of this writ- 

 ing, July 23, no " porridge " has come into 

 any dish from either clover or basswood at 

 the Doolittle and Clark apiaries, on account 

 of an almost total failure of bloom from 

 either, so that our only hope now is from 

 bucLwheat. Should tliis fail us, the bees will 

 have to be fed for their winter supply. 



Up to the year 1914 I have always classed 

 1869 as the poorest year for bees that I ever 

 knew; but 1914 must, in the future, be the 

 poorest for white honey, as 1869 gave 25 

 lbs. of white " box " honey from two old 

 colonies in the spring. We had the maxi- 

 mum number of bees all right, and in good 

 time; but with no bloom to provide any 

 nectar, efforts count for naught. 



