1906 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



659 



bees as when united. No. 4, bees all below, 

 the queen trying to get through the exclud- 

 er. No. 5 contained a daughter of the Root 

 queen I received as a premium in a photo 

 contest— a very promising young queen. I 

 was hoping she was all right. In this I was 

 disappointed. The bees were all below, and 

 I found her on the excluder nearer dead than 

 alive. I fed and caged her, and put her in 

 a strong colony, but she never recovered. 

 As the day was fine when I examined them 

 I decided to divide the lower colonies 

 and save the queens if possible, all of them 

 being young and prolific Italians. So I took 

 extra hives with two extra combs of sealed 

 stores; then one comb of brood and bees, 

 putting the queen and the comb of brood in 

 the hive between the two combs of honey; 

 then a division-board and cloth over; then I 

 exchanged places with the strong colony 

 while they were flying. Now, April 23, they 

 are all fairly strong. What I want to know 

 is, why one of them was all right and the 

 others the way I have described. 

 Le Mars, la. 



[As Mr. Alexander is probably still confined 

 to his bed— at least unable to take care of his 

 correspondence— I take the liberty of sug- 

 gesting where, possibly, your trouble may 

 be. By referring to Mr. Alexander's article 

 on page 354 he says unite the weak one ' ' to 

 a good strong colony." His understanding 

 of "a good strong colony," from what I 

 saw at his yards, I should say might be dif- 

 ferent from your idea of the same thing. A 

 colony must not only fill the spaces between 

 the frames comfortably, but must be fairly 

 boiling over with bees. Did I not actually 

 see the proof of Mr. Alexander's statement 

 verified right in his own yard, of two colo- 

 nies one above the other, each having a 

 queen, and separated by a perforated zinc, 

 1 should have supposed, of course, that such 

 a plan would not work; that the bees would 

 fight, that those from below would immedi- 

 ately go above and ball the queen. But 

 clrsarly these things didn't happen at the 

 Alexander yard at the time of my visit. 



There is something else, I believe, is im- 

 portant; and that is, doing the uniting with- 

 out any smoking. When you smoked them 

 to prevent them from fighting you set them 

 to boiling over. In their excitement they 

 went up into the upper story, there came 

 across the strange queen with her strange 

 odor and killed her. But by quietly uniting 

 without smoke the bees from below would not 

 come up till after a day or two. In the mean 

 time, the weakling bunch of bees will have 

 acquired the odor of those below; then when 

 there is actual intermingling there will be no 

 fighting. 



You spoke of one set of bees being united 

 successfully. Is it not possible that this 

 got less smoke? 



Another thing should be mentioned. Mr. 

 Alexander's bees are of the very gentle 

 leather- colored Italians. You do not say 

 what yours are. From the fact that you 

 thought it necessary to smoke them before 

 uniting would indicate that they might have 



been hybrids. And this leads me to say that 

 possibly hybrids, Cyprians, and other cross 

 strains would not submit to this plan of unit- 

 ing with queens —Ed.] 



BRIEF NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS. , 

 Hofiman Frames not Movable, 



BY H. H. LEWIS. 



I was much struck by the apparent ease 

 with which you stated you could take out 

 the frames in early spring as compared 

 with my experience. Why, I have turned 

 hives upside down and driven the frames out 

 with a hammer, smashing some frames all 

 to pieces. I began to ask where and why 

 the difference, and why are Hoffmans al- 

 ways hard to handle with me? Humidity of 

 the locality has a great deal to do with the 

 successful use of a Hoffman frame, in my 

 opinion. I am located in a country of exces- 

 sive rainfall; and during the winter my 

 hives, although under cover, swell with 

 moisture, and Hoffman frames almost to 

 bursting. In the spring it is impossible to 

 get a frame out unless by the method above 

 described; and as fast as the hive dries out 

 during hot weacher and shrinks, the bees 

 fill up the cracks between the frames with 

 propolis, and so I am not much better off so 

 far as handling frames is concerned than I 

 was in winter. However, I established the 

 first out-apiary I know of in British Colum- 

 bia last season, and found out that staple or 

 nail-spaced frames were not the whole thing. 



I hauled my honey home in the hives as I 

 took them off, and the rattle and banging 

 together of the nail-spaced frames was so 

 bad that honey was running over the bottom 

 of my light spring wagon, and I had to ex- 

 tract as soon as I got home. Hives with 

 Hoffman frames carried all right. 



CONTRACTING ENTRANCES DURING WINTER. 



For a number of years I contracted the 

 entrances during cold weather, as you ad- 

 vocate; but the result was that, with me, 

 the moisture was running out the entrance 

 in streams. Bees did not winter well either. 

 Since then I leave the entrance full width 

 at all times, and am more successful. My 

 bees are wintered with sealed covers, no 

 packing on top of frames, as cold is not ex- 

 cessive—rarely goes to zero. 



PRODUCING COMB AND EXTRACTED HONEY 

 ON THE SAME HIVE. 



The first hive I bought, about fourteen 

 years ago, had hanging section frames. I 

 got about 300 frames of this kind, but soon 

 adopted the open- top frame, as I saw a good 

 many advantages in it, and used the hang- 

 ing frames to produce extracted honey. 

 They were the correct thing for this pur- 

 pose — best frame to put on in the spring, 

 while the nights were cool. I have tried 

 sections and these extracting-frames in the 

 same super dozens of times, but never had 

 any success. I tried it this reason with no 

 success. As soon as the bees filled out the 

 extracted frames they would swarm rather 



