May, 1920 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



269 



several Long Idea hives all in one row. The 

 late Mr. roi)pleton said that if he were go- 

 ing to start again he would use the Laug- 

 stroth frame instead of the American. How 

 many frames shall it have? Twenty-five are 

 enough for a queen-breeder, but 32 is a bet- 

 ter number for the extracted-honey producer; 

 because if he should ever have a honey 

 flow large enough to require more than 32 

 frames he can put on one, two, or three 

 upper stories of ordinary ten-frame hive 



Pig. 2. — General view of the Long Idea cell-buildin;? 

 hives. There are 50 in all, not one of which has 

 cast a swarm during the last three years, while 

 every one of the 2^ -story colonies of like capacity 

 in standard Langstroth hives has swarmed. 



bodies, and the combined width of these 

 stories side by side will be exactly the 

 length of a 32-frame hive body below. 



I said this hive is well adapted to oM 

 men, women, and girls, or to those who from 

 weakness of the back or otherwise are not 

 able to lift heavy loads. With this hive 

 there is nothing heavier to lift than a sin- 

 gle Langstroth frame which, when filled with 

 honey, seldom weighs over 614 pounds. It 

 is very easy for one to tilt the lid back 

 like opening a trunk, sit on one end of the 

 hive, and work toward the other. (See Fig. 

 4.) 



The brood can be placed at the front end, 

 with the surplus combs in the other. Or 

 the brood can be placed centrally, leaving 

 the store combs on either side. In that case 

 the entrance should be on the side rather 

 than on the end of the hive. When run for 

 the production of extracted honey thi^ 

 combs at one end of the hive can be ex- 

 tracted, the combs replaced, and in a week 

 or ten days later, the combs from the o])- 

 posite end extracted. No hard-and-fast ruh^ 

 need be applied. The entire manipulation 

 requires no heavy lifting, because the combs 

 one by one can be removed and placed in 

 a box or wheelbarrow and run to the ex- 

 tracting-house to be extracted. A bee-es- 

 cape or queen-excluder could be used; but 

 these would have to be mounted in a tight- 

 fitting division-board, berause the hive, if 

 divided at all. would have to be divided on 

 a vertical plane, As a matter of general 



practice it is not necessary to use either 

 bee-escape or queen-excluder. 



When the time arrives to put the bees 

 away for winter the brood-nest may be 

 left any size desired. It should, however, 

 be contracted to as small a space as possi- 

 ble and yet allow the requisite amount of 

 stores for the size of the cluster of bees. A 

 tight-fitting division-board should then be 

 placed on each side, and leaves or other 

 packing material poured in to fill up the 

 empty space. A tray of packing material 

 placed on top under a deep telescope cover 

 completes the preparation for winter. If 

 the two sides of the Long Idea hive are 

 made double-walled and the space on either 

 side of the cluster is filled with packing ma- 

 terial, the colony will be well protected. 

 But if one does not wish to go to that ex- 

 pense he can put the colony into an eight- 

 frame hive, place this in the center of the 

 Long Idea hive, and then put in packing ma- 

 terial around it. There should, of course, 

 be provision made for an entrance leading 

 from the inner hive to the outside. 



While the first cost of the Long Idea hive 

 is more, it takes in the equivalent of more 

 than a three-story ten-frame Langstroth 

 hive. It does not require the use of ad- 

 ditional supers, queen-excluders, honey- 

 boards, nor any special winter hive. Tak- 

 ing the entire season thru, it cuts down the 

 cost of the apparatus, eliminates all lifting 

 of honey, and, what is of considerable im- 

 portance, it almost entirely eliminates 

 swarming. And this brings me to the ques- 

 tion of how it prevents swarming. 



How It Controls Swarming. 



Before I answer the how and the why, let 

 me relate something of our own experience 

 with swarming at our queen-rearing yards 

 under the control of Mell Pritchard. As 



Fig. 3. — The TiOng Idea hive as used and recom- 

 mended by Eugene Baker, near Los Angeles, Calif. 



every queen-breeder knows, in order to get 

 strong and vigorous baby queens in large 

 cells it is necessary to bring about a super- 

 sedure or swarming condition in the colony. 

 If there is not a light flow of honey coming 

 ill, artificial conditions should be created by 



