November, 1921 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



693 



/"- 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



torn of the brood-chambers, the fronts and 

 side of the hive projecting over them. The 

 entrances are thus protected from being 

 blocked with snow or sleet in winter, and 

 water running down the front of the hive 

 never touches the entrance. 



We prefer not to have our bottom-boards 

 project beyond the front of the hive; in 

 fact, they should be enough shorter so that 

 the front edge is one inch or more back from 

 the front of the hive. This is a great ad- 

 vantage when moving bees. A board of 

 %-inch stuff cleated at the ends is placed 

 against the front of each hive and reaches 

 to the ground for an alighting-board. They 

 will be seen in the illustration lying on the 

 grass in front of the hives, as they had not 

 been gathered up for winter when the photo 

 was taken. 



When packing the supers over the brood- 

 chambers for winter we first place on the 



over the supers when crowded together, but 

 any water that gets in where the covers 

 touch each other will be caught by the wa- 

 terproof paper under the covers. The lattice 

 fence shown at rear is made of % x 2-inch 

 strips, spaced one inch apart and nailed di- 

 agonally to 1 X 4 stringers. Over this lattice 

 work and running at an angle of 45 degrees 

 are nailed % x 2-inch strips spaced 5 inches 

 apart. This fence inclosing the apiary is 

 eight feet high. It is much more effective 

 as a windbreak than a tight board fence, as 

 the open spaces in the fence break the wind 

 up, instead of dipping down in the center of 

 the yard. 



The most that can be said against the 

 "quad" plan is that the hives permanently 

 pack on but one side and one end must be 

 mated right and left. That never bothers 

 the man who keeps hives in clusters of four. 

 Our plan is to leave the hives in the position 



The quad hive ready for winter. 



brood-frames a "hill device," which we 

 make of barrel hoops cut one inch less than 

 the inside width of the hive. On top of 

 this we place a piece of heavy burlap. We 

 then fill the super with any good insulating 

 material, such as regranulated cork, old for- 

 est leaves broken up fine, finely cut straw, 

 ordinary forest leaves, cork chips, fine chaff, 

 or sawdust and planer shavings mixed. We 

 give these in the order that 35 years' experi- 

 ence has led us to believe is their relative 

 value. We leave about 1%-inch space be- 

 tween the top of the packing and the honey- 

 boards, which we use on top of the supers. A 

 piece of waterproof paper is laid on top of 

 the honey-boards, and on that the regular 

 hive covers. They are too large to telescope 



shown until the clover harvest. At the ad- 

 vent of fruit bloom we take the packing 

 out of the supers and fill them with drawn 

 combs, which usually get pretty well filled 

 with brood. When clover opens up we 

 spread the hives apart, put the queen below, 

 put on the queen-excluders, then a super of 

 extracting combs and the super of brood on 

 top. In ten days we cut out the queen-cells 

 and nine times out of ten we get no swarms 

 from those colonies. Keeping the bees well 

 supplied with empty supers also helps in 

 getting this result. 



The other picture shows the quartette in 

 action. In the summer of 1920 American 

 foul brood appeared in five colonies in this 

 apiary. They were taken to our ' ' hospital, ' ' 



