82 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



February, 1921. 



keeping, stated that his location had failed 

 during the preceding 15 years, and that he 

 had given up hope that the State of Michi- 

 gan would ever produce another crop of 

 honey. 



Good Seasons Are Returning. 

 Gradually, however, tlie tide turned in the 

 direction of better crops, as beekeepers 

 learned to leave more honey in the hives 

 and quit nursing along little colonies in 

 little Vjrood-chanibers by furnisliing them 

 food on the "from hand to mouth" plan. 

 Gradually tlie colonies of better beekeepers 

 have grown larger and larger until now 

 even the 10-frame Langstroth hive has be- 

 come too small in many cases to hold all 

 the brood of a good colony at the begin- 

 ning of the honey flow, and those who are 

 using a smaller hive now usually expect to 

 have two stories better filled with brood at 

 the beginning of the honey flow than was 

 the single story of 25 to 30 years ago. The 

 comb-honey producers of the present who 

 are still using the eight-frame hive do not 

 find it necessary to take out empty combs 

 from the brood-chamber and insert dum- 



mies to fill the vacant space. Instead of this 

 they are making increase with the extra 

 frames of brood left over when they reduce 

 this hive from a two-story hive to a single 

 story at the time the comb-honey supers 

 are put on at the beginning of tlie honey 

 flow. 



These changes for the better have come 

 about so gradually that many beekeepers 

 have failed to notice the changes in their 

 management which are largely responsible 

 for them, and some are inclined to believe 

 that the seasons are growing better. Others 

 say that we have developed better queens 

 which can fill 12 to 15 frames with brood 

 instead of 5 to 8 as during the days of ex- 

 tremely small brood-chambers. 



But to be convinced that the greater 

 amount of stores which the better beekeep- 

 ers are now leaving with the bees is largely 

 responsible^ for the better conditions of to- 

 day, it is only necessary to visit a few of 

 the many beekeepers who still compel their 

 colonies to live from hand to mouth, for 

 some have not yet learned the lesson from 

 the period of depression from which our in- 

 dustry has not yet fully recovered. 



VARIOUS SCHEMES FOR WIRING 



Echoes of "The Thousand Dollar 

 Trick." The Plan we Prefer. 



By lona Fowls 



NO article ap- 

 pearing in 

 Gleani n g s 

 in Bee Culture 

 in recent years 

 caused such a 

 deluge of dis- 

 cussions and sug- 

 gestions as E. 

 R. Root's article 



on wiring — the "Thousand-dollar Trick," 

 that appeared in the February issue last 

 year. In the April issue a few of these sug- 

 gestions were published; but since then, 

 during a whole year, they have not ceased 

 pouring into Gleanings' office, and wo have 



accordingly decided to give our readers an 

 idea of the nature of these suggestions and 

 also our own experience in trying many of 

 them out. 



Too Much Crossing of Wires. 

 In some of the nietliods there is too much 

 crossing of the wires. One such method (Fig. 



1 ) is given by 

 John A r b t i n, 

 Des Moines, 

 Iowa, as fol- 

 lows: 



' ' I use Jumbo 

 frames, and have 

 five horizontal 

 wires and three 

 brace wires. The 

 advantages of this system are that the 

 brood-comb can not sag, the queen can lay 

 eggs up to the top-bar, and the comb will 

 not break down in the extractor. The dis- 

 advantages are that it takes more wire and 

 time to fix it in this way, and it cuts up the 



foundation more when the wires are imbed- 

 ded than the old system does. ' ' 



A. W. Lindsay, Detroit, Mich., gives a 

 similar plan (Fig. 2), but in this case the 

 wire is fastened to the top-bar and bot- 

 tom-bar as well as to the end-bars. This, 

 Mr. Lindsay believes, results in combs bet- 

 ter attached to the bottom-bar, and brood 

 is reared nearer the top-bar. 



Our experiments have shown us that, 



