1906 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



583 



like manner and return to the lower entrance, adding 

 their strength to the old bees. This process will 

 continue and would continue on until all the brood 

 and the queen in the upper hive is deserted; but 

 before this happens the slide (I) must be opened 

 so that enough bees from below can pass upnrard 

 through the holes D, D, covered with perforated 

 zinc, to take care of them. In eight days lift off the 

 upper hive; remove the comb of brood from the lower 

 one on which are cells, and cut out all but the best one. 

 Replace the comb, putting back the upper story, with 

 the dividing-board between as before, with the chute. 

 When the virgin below is hatched out and laying, re- 

 move the dividing-board; and the young queen, if the 

 old one is of no value, will " settle the old one," so Mr. 

 Chambers says. 



A colony so treated, he explains, will not swarm Ev- 

 ery bit of brood has been saved, and added to the parent 

 colony after it has hatched, thus giving the "swarm " 

 the strength of both the new and the old force of bees. 



HOW TO USE FOR COMB HONEY. 



When running for comb honey the process is varied 

 somewhat. Use starters in the lower story, but give no 

 frame of brood. Shake the old queen io front of the en- 

 trance of lower hive, and put the case of sections di- 

 rectly on top of hive B. On top of the super place the 

 dividing-board and then the hive A with its brood and 

 bees minus the queen, which is now in hive B with 

 frames of starters, but no brood. It will be necessary 

 to have in hive A a mature queen- cell, as the constant 

 accession of bees from the upper to the lower hive will 

 leave the upper one in poor condition to rear good 

 cells. Although Mr. Chambers does not say so, I sup- 

 pose when the upper hive has hatched out all its brood 

 it is removed. 



Mr. Chambers feels that any modern hive can be 

 made perfectly non swarming by the use of these two 

 simple attachments — a dividing-board and a chute in 

 front. Personally I am inclined to think Mr Chambers 

 has a good thing, and I should be glad to have our read- 

 ers try it and report. 



With the explanation that has already been given, the 

 reader will be fully able to understand what Mr. Cham- 

 bers now has to say.— Ed.] 



During the past seven years there have 

 appeared quite a number of non- swarming 

 plans, some possessing real value, but all 

 more or less uncertain at different times and 

 under different conditions. In the hands of 

 the novice these several plans failed very 

 often because of the multiplicity or advice 

 regarding the time and method of manipu- 

 lating. One said, manipulate only when the 

 bees are ready to swarm; another said the 

 right time is when there is a honey- flow on. 

 One said shake, another said brush; and still 

 another said drive and the novice was at a 

 loss to know which to follow. Many times 

 he did not follow any one very closely, per- 

 haps, and scored a failure or concluded that 

 no one knew much about it any way. Many 

 of these plans were failures because of in- 

 ability of the operat jr to comprehend the 

 small details and their relation to the nat- 

 ural instinct of the bees. But more often 

 they were failures because, as I suspect, 

 there was too much tedious work and too 

 much complication ever to be faithfully car- 

 ried out by the average bee-keeper. 



Among the most meritorious of these 

 plans I have no hesitancy in saying was the 

 Stachelhausen, or brushed-swarm plan. I 

 was very familiar with this p'an from the 

 start, and it always worked satisfactorily in 

 my hands. However, I always considered 

 it weak in some features; and one of its ob- 

 jectionable weaknesses was that it did not 

 allow of requeening at the time of the other 

 manipulations, and this I consider a most 

 serioua weakness; for to the man who wish- 

 es to produce honey nothing is of as much 



importance as thrifty young queens; and 

 while I do not maintain that all queens 

 should be replaced by young ones every 

 year, still I fully believe that more honey 

 would be produced if this were the universal 

 practice. Another weakness of the Stachel- 

 hausen plan was that every comb had to be- 

 handled unless the operator was fortunate 

 enough to be using the shallow hive, in 

 which case he could handle parts of hives in- 

 stead of combs. Still another weakness was 

 that honey was shaken out to such an extent 

 that robbing was invited, and at times this 

 was not desirable; in short, the undesirable 

 features were so many that I could not 

 enumerate them all, and this was the best 

 by all odds of the plans brought forward 

 during the past eight years. 



Now, the Chambers non- swarming plan 

 and mechanical device, as described in 

 Gleanings for Nov. 15, 1905, is entirely free 

 from any and all of ttiese faults, and, be- 

 sides, possesses many desirable features that 

 none of these earlier plans ever had — first 

 to recognize the value of requeening; first 

 to realize that the entire force must be di- 

 verted to the working hive, if the greatest 

 amount of surplus is to be secured, and first 

 to make possible a non-swarming manipula- 

 tion without the handling of all combs or 

 shaking-out of honey. All these advantages, 

 with the certain and sure control of all 

 swarming, the rapid and up- to date manner 

 of manipulating, and the simplicity and ease 

 of operating the device and plan, together 

 with the trifling cost of the device, render 

 the plan one of the most advantageous ever 

 brought out, especially for the specialist, 

 who needs something that will do the work 

 systematically and surely, and with business 

 speed. 



I also want to call attention to the fact 

 that this plan, unlike many of the so-called 

 non- swarming plans, entirely carries out the 

 desire of the bees to swarm and requeen, 

 and thus satisfies that primary instinct of 

 bee nature. This prevents all sulking and 

 failure to enter the supers; and during the 

 entire time or period of manipulation there 

 is no loss of brood, nor has the old queen 

 ever entirely stopped laying until the young 

 queen is in full egg-laying sway; and all 

 must admit that this gets very near to na- 

 ture's way, and. as I know, is always safe 

 and sure. Since my article appeared in 

 Gleanings I have received many letters 

 from all parts of our country, asking for ad- 

 ditional information regarding the operation 

 of the device on hives of different construc- 

 tion. In answer to all such inquiries I wish 

 to say that this device can be used success- 

 fully on any kind of modern hives, but will 

 need to be slightly changed or modified to 

 fit the different widths and depths, other- 

 wise the principle remains the same. The 

 article describing this device was sent in 

 early in the spring; but it was some time 

 before Editor Root and Mr. Murray could 

 thoroughly understand its construction so 

 that drawings could be correctly made. 

 Since the article describing it was used, 



