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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



November, 1922 



such views in Gleanings. If the Dadants 

 will say after having counted — not guessed 

 — the instances for five years that brood 

 has been found in the supers of their hives, 

 that the instances have not exceeded five 

 per cent when no queen-excluders are used, 

 then I would adopt the Dadant hive. Where 

 bee-escapes are used, if there is any brood 

 in the super, the bees will not go down; 

 and I do not care to find many such when 

 extracting a crop of honey. In making this 

 statement I recognize that it is a very de- 

 sirable thing to have a frame of the same 

 size in the brood-chamber and super, but it 

 is also desirable to do without a queen-ex- 

 cluder. 



Wasted Space in Brood-Chambers. 



Often, more often than the most of us 

 realize, a queen does not use all of the comb 

 space in the brood-chamber, because some 

 of the cells are not the proper size. We 

 may blame the queen for the presence of 

 many unoccupied cells, when it is a matter 

 of cells built upon stretched comb founda- 

 tion. I undoubtedly have many such frames 

 in use. 



In my estimation what counts in bee- 

 keeping is, not the best yield from one col- 

 ony in the apiary but the average yield of 

 the entire apiary in contrast to the yield 

 from the best colony. If the beekeeper gets 

 350 lbs. from the best colony, and an aver- 

 age of 100 per colony is obtained in the 

 apiary, it clearly shows that the beekeeper 

 is far behind what can be done under best 

 conditions, and this may be the result of 

 stretched cells in the brood-chamber. 



Brantford, Ont. 



E. F. Holtermann. 



A Palace for the Queen. 



In looking over the hives that have been 

 made in the past 50 years, I have been im- 

 pressed with the fact that, in a vast ma- 

 jority of them, little thought has been given 

 to the main factor; that a hive should be 

 made to conform to the wishes and whims 

 of the queen, for the more eggs we can get 

 a queen to lay, the more honey will that 

 colony produce. 



Hives have been made shallow in order to 

 force the honey into the super, regardless of 

 the fact that this also forced the queen to 

 go on a strike for lack of convenient cells in 

 which to lay. Divisible brood-chambers of 

 varying size have been made, for they were 

 convenient to manipulate although exceed- 

 ingly inconvenient to the queen, since the 

 queen will not lay outside of the cluster 

 and since much of the area enclosed by the 

 cluster is taken up with top-bars, bottom- 

 bars, spaces between top and bottom bars 

 and spaces between the bottom of the 

 combs and bottom-bars. Thus it can be seen 

 that "the bumblebees of the fields have 

 holes in the ground and that hornets of the 

 air have nests in the trees, but the queen 

 bee hath naught where to lay her eggs" 

 (with apologies to Matthew). 



When Small Hives Reduce the Crop. 



Then the craze for small hives ran ram- 

 pant. The argument seemed to be that, if 

 one could make a hive just small enough he 

 could force every ounce of honey right up 

 into the supers where he could get it and 

 sell it. And the beekeeper usually felt lucky 

 if it did force an ounce of honey up there. 

 Naturally, the queen wanted a home suit- 

 able to her capacity; so she swarmed and 

 found a nice big hollow tree with a cavity 

 a foot and a half across and six or eight 

 feet long where she proceeded to do the 

 thing right. Some hives have been made 

 so they can be easily hauled about on trucks 

 to chase the honey flow. The claim for them 

 is that they are light, easy to handle and 

 are just the right size for one man — but hold 



Brood combs 17% inches square. These give the 



queen ample opportunity to "spread herself." 



How would these do in the queen's palace? 



on a minute, it is not the man that lays 

 the eggs; it is the queen. 



Barriers in Way of Queen. 



It is astonishing sometimes to see how 

 some little obstacle will cause the queen to 

 curtail egg-laying. I once saw a nice young 

 queen in a Danzenbaker hive crowd five 

 combs Avith brood and refuse to lay in the 

 remaining four just because between the five 

 she was laying in and the others there Avas 

 a space of about three-fourths of an inch. 

 She crowded the five frames so that the 

 bees removed every cell of honey. When 

 the frames were placed close together she 

 at once filled them Avith eggs. It has fre- 

 quently been noticed that a frame of foun- 

 dation in the brood-nest Avill confine the 

 qneen to one side of it, and frequently the 

 colony Avill swarm rather than pass by the 

 foundation. Most beekeepers have obserA'ed 

 hoAv reluctant a queen is to go down into a 

 loAver story Avhen once she has taken pos- 

 session of the upper story. When there are 

 no bars and spaces she will lay clear to the 

 bottom. 



We cannot force a queen to lay eggs, but 

 we can easily force her to stop laying or cur- 

 tail laying. With the regular Langstroth 

 frame, the queen attempts to lay in a circle. 

 She enlarges the circle until she comes to 

 the top-bar, and then she loses valuable 

 time. If she knew just where to go it 

 Avould not take much time to cross over to 

 the other side and begin again, but some- 



