850 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



November, 1917 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



In order to reach other frames of honey 

 when their available stores ran out, they 

 would be compelled to leave the top of the 

 hive, which is naturally the warmest part, 

 and to travel the depth of the full frames. 

 This they could not do without breaking the 

 cluster. This is only a remote possibility 

 that may occur during a long hard winter; 

 but how much safer it would be to give for 

 winter stores a shallow extracting-super full 

 of honey! The warmth from the cluster 

 over the late fall brood does not rise too 

 far above them; and it is a very poor colony 

 indeed that can not obtain access to the 

 whole of the frames from side to side during 

 the coldest weather. They have the advan- 

 tage of the STjaoe between upper and lower 

 frames at all times, and there is more than 

 sufficient honey in a ten - frame shallow 

 super for any average colony to winter on. 



Moreover, it is easier to give outer pro- 

 tection to a li/^-story than to a two-story 

 hive. There may be a little extra work at 

 extracting time with the shallow frames, 

 but even this is offset by many of their 

 minor advantages, such as less wiring, stiff- 

 er combs in extracting time, and better 

 adaptability for producing chunk honey, 

 etc. So with all due respect to such suc- 

 cessful beekeepers as J. E. Crane and R. F. 

 Holtermann, I think I will not discard my 

 shallow extracting-framles — at least not in 

 the locality where I practice beekeeping. 



St. Johns, Que. A. W. Finley. 



[Knowing that Chalon Fowls and his 

 daughters were strong champions of the 

 shallow frame we referred Mr. Finley's let- 

 ter to them. Miss Fowls replies:] 



The above article meets with my most 

 hearty approval. Just now, when some of 

 our strongest and most vigorous young men 

 are going to war, leaving the apiaries in 

 charge of women and old men, it seems a 

 good time to point out the advantages of 

 shallow frames. 



In hauling and in extracting, the shallow 

 combs are less liable to breakage ; and altho 

 others may differ with us, we have always 

 considered it easier to uncap two shallow 

 combs than one deep one. We keep only 

 enough deep supers to forestall swarming 

 and to insure plenty of winter stores. And 

 we get a much nicer grade of honey by 

 keeping the brood out of the supers and not 

 interclianging much after the season begins. 



One day of lifting when the crop is on 

 the hives makes us staunch advocates of the 

 shalloAv frame and causes us to forget any 



slight disadvantage caused by handling two 

 sizes of combs during the rest of the season. 

 Of course, if one feels that nothing can 

 quite compensate for the thrill of i^ride in 

 exercising a strength so herculean that 60 

 or 70 lb. supers may be tossed about all day 

 as mere toys— I say if one feels like this, 

 let him just insert his tool under two supers 

 instead of one. — Iona FovhliS. 



Another Advocate of the Shallow Frame 



In another issue of Gleanings^ in re- 

 porting a beekeepers' convention which I 

 (hink was in Ohio, R. F. Holtermann is 

 credited with making the statement that he 

 would quit beekeeping if he were obliged 

 to use the shallow extracting-supers, and 

 you agreed that was the general opinion 

 among the majority of beekeepers. 



I believe Mr. Holtermann was sincere in 

 the statement that he made, and no doubt it 

 would entail too gi'eat an expense to make 

 the change. But why should the wheels of 

 progress be stopped by old and extensive 

 beekeepers who have had no experience in 

 the subject of which they talk? It is the 

 same argument that old box-hive beekeep- 

 ers had against the movable-frame hive. 



For a number of years I have been test- 

 ing these shallow supers, and I have come 

 to the conclusion that, by proper manage- 

 ment, the labor in beekeeping can be reduc- 

 ed from 25 to 40 per cent, especially in 

 running outyard work. I have wondered 

 many times why beekeepers in running 

 outyards resort to extracting - outfits on 

 auto-trucks and wagons, unless it is from 

 the fact that large supers are too cumber- 

 some to handle, and hauling them is too 

 dangerous to the frames of honey. Then, 

 again, from all the articles I have ever 

 seen in Gleanings I have yet to see any- 

 thing on how the honey was taken home 

 when extracted at an outyard. I find, and 

 know from years of experience, that my 

 labor of transporting extracting-supers to 

 outyards and back again with the honey in 

 them is not much greater than the time of 

 taking the tinware out and drawing the 

 honey home in tin cans, the only difference 

 being the extra weight of combs and supers. 

 Altho I will not stop to explain them now, 

 I find, in the use of the sliallow extracting- 

 super, a whole system of advantages thru- 

 out the entire season. 



Chatham, Ont, W. A. Chrysler. 



