218 



GLEANINGS TN BEE CULTURE 



Ai'RiL, 1921 



t)(\si(ie.s a ]ir(tlitu' (lueiMi, and brood in all 

 si ayes. 



How shall we secure such colonies? 

 Again we have three essential factors, name- 

 ly: A colony that has wintered well; plenty 

 of food for the rearing of brood (either 

 honey, syriip, or nectar, and pollen) ; and. 

 in the third place, a brood-chamber large 

 enough to accommodate a prolific queen. I 

 am convinced that most of the hives in use 

 have a brood-chamber that is entirely too 

 small, resulting in the checking of brood- 

 rearing, crowding of ' the brood-nest, and 

 consequent swarming. Even the ten-frame 

 Langstroth hive-body in common use is too 

 small for a good queen; and we can get a 

 much greater amount of brood reared by 



Corner of apiary uf -1. M. Llurhauan. Strun- 

 iiie.s are the ones that .store tlie honey. 



the use of a larger brood-chamber, either 

 one with larger frames, or mora of them 

 in the hive, or else by allowing the queen 

 the use of two stories of combs during the 

 period of greatest brood-rearing in the 

 spring. 



It is important that the colony should 

 have wintered well and come up to the 

 period of spring brood-rearing with bees 

 that have not wasted their vitality to a 

 large extent in the attempt to keep up the 

 temperature of the cluster during the rigors 

 of winter. In order that a colony should 

 winter properly and come thru in the best 

 condition for building up, we find that 

 once again, there are three essentials, which 

 are sufficient stores, adequate protection, 

 and plenty of young bees at the beginning 

 of winter. There should be at least 25 

 pounds of honey per colony, and more would 

 be better, for if it is not needed it will not 

 be wasted. 



As to what constitutes adequate protec- 

 tion, that is a matter of locality and cli- 

 mate, and must be worked out to suit in- 

 dividual cases. If the bees are wintered out- 

 of-doors, we can hardly emphasize too 

 strongly the value of some kind of wind- 

 break, wherever freezing temperature oc- 

 curs at any time during the winter months. 



For good wintering, it has been demon- 

 strated that there should be as many as 

 three pounds of young bees in each colony 

 when brood-roariug ceases in the fall, and 

 where there is a late honey flow the bees 

 will generallj^ attend to that themselves. 

 But if there is no honey coming in during 

 the autumn months, the beekeeper should 

 resort to stimulative feeding to secure late 

 brood-rearing. A few ounces of thin syrup 

 given every day or two for a month will 

 give good results. 



It is not my purpose at this time to go 

 further into the details of methods of ma- 

 nipulation, styles of hives, equipment, etc., 

 as these are all relative matters, which will 

 necessarily vary with different persons, lo- 

 calities, and nectar sources; and the indi- 

 vidual beekeeper must adapt them to his 

 own conditions to the best of his ability, 

 always keeping in mind the fact that, if 

 the essentials are i^resent, success will be 

 attained. J. M. Buchanan. 



Franklin, Tenn. 



FINDING QUEENS 



An Easy Way to Find the Excitable Kind 



After having had considerable trouble 

 in finding the queens, especially "blacks" 

 and having sometimes opened a hive 

 three different times and spent an hour in 

 the search without finding the queen, it 

 occurred to me that an excluder could be 

 used to advantage. I proceeded as follows: 

 If a super is on the hive, this is removed 

 and set on an empty hive-body, the ex- 

 cluder is placed on top of the super, and 

 another eiiiitty hive-body placed on top of 

 this. Then the brood-frames are taken out of 

 the hive and the bees shaken into the empty 

 hive-body above the excluder when they 

 generally pass down thru the excluder into 

 the super at once. If they are slow in start- 

 ing, a little smoke will send them down. Un- 

 less I happen to see the queen before, I do not 

 look for her until all the frames have been 

 shaken and the workers are about all thru 

 the excluder, when she will generally be 

 seen at once among the drones. If she is not 

 found then, the few bees on the bottom- 

 board and on the sides of the brood-cham- 

 ber are shaken and she will be found as soon 

 as these have passed thru the excluder. If 

 there is no super on the hive, the bees on 

 two frames of brood are shaken into the 

 brood-chamber, these frames of brood placed 

 in an empty hive-body, the excluder on top 

 of this body and the other empty hive-body 

 over the excluder, then the bees are shaken 

 into the upper hive-body as when the super 

 is used. 



Pomfret, Vt. Carl C. Johnson. 



