298 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 15 



time. As soon as your colony has eight 

 well-filled frames of brood and bees, take 

 one frame of this brood and bees (but not 

 the queen) from the center of the hive. 

 Put in its place a comb of honey with the 

 cappings all broken, unless there is honey 

 coming in. Then an empty comb is bet- 

 ter. Now place a wood- zinc queen-excluder 

 over the hive. Over this place a full- 

 depth body. In this second story place the 

 comb of brood and bees with an empty comb 

 by the side of it, if honey is coming in. If 

 there is a dearth of honey, place a comb of 

 honey, if you have it. If you have to feed, 

 place your feeder in this upper story. If 

 your queen is a good one, in three days you 

 can take out another comb of brood from 

 below, and place it above as before, and so 

 on until you have the upper story filled. If, 

 by the time your first combs are about all 

 hatched, honey is not coming in freely, place 

 the upper ones below for the queen to re- 

 fill. This will give you eight combs hatched 

 and eight ready to hatch. By the time the 

 second eight hatch, or before the bees get 

 crowded, place a shallow super of drawn 

 combs over the deep one. This super will catch 

 your first honey. As soon as it is sealed in 

 the center, place it down next to the brood- 

 chamber, but above the queen-excluder. I 

 will explain the reason for this. If you leave 

 the full-depth super next to the brood- 

 chamber, the bees will leave at least one- 

 third of the combs for the queen; and as 

 she can not reach this empty space it is a 

 clear loss. By placing the shallow super of 

 sealed honey next to the brood-chamber, all 

 the space above the queen- excluder will be 

 filled with honey. As soon as the deep or 

 top super is three-fourths full, raise it up 

 and give another shallow super of drawn 

 comb. You had better not trust this colony 

 to draw out foundation, for if you do you will 

 find half a bushel of bees hanging out on 

 a limb enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, 

 some day, when you would rather they 

 would be getting honey. Take colonies that 

 are just strong enough to fill one shallow 

 super. Put in one or two drawn combs; fill 

 the rest with foundation; place over this the 

 weak colony, and they wilF give better satis- 

 faction than the stronger ones. 



To get full-depth combs drawn, take 

 combs of brood that are ready to hatch, 

 from the brood-chamber, and place above 

 or build nuclei of them for your increase. 

 Place the foundation in their place, and it 

 will be full of eggs in three or four days. 

 The above method will give one full-depth 

 super of 40 lbs., two shallow supers of 50 

 lbs., making 90 lbs. This, most seasons, 

 will be as much as you will get, and this, 

 too, of well-ripened honey of the very best 

 quality. One year in about five this 90-lb. 

 surplus arrangement will not answer. What, 

 then, must we do ? If honey is coming in 

 with a rush, the three supers will be filled 

 before the second or deep super is sealed. 

 In this case take the four middle combs out 

 of the deep super, and extract them ; place 

 the deep super between the two shallow 



ones, and by the time they will need more 

 room you can take the shallow super from 

 the top. Place it next to the brood- cham- 

 ber; take the bottom super, which is now 

 well sealed, and extract it, placing it be- 

 tween the deep and shallow super; and by 

 the time it is filled, the deep super will do 

 to extract, taking out all of the combs this 

 time, and so on as before, always using your 

 own judgment as to whether the honey is 

 ready to come off. It must be sealed before 

 it is extracted, if you want quality. If 

 you want quality and quantity you must 

 have empty combs to hold at least V'O Ihs. ; 

 and if you have enough combs to hold 115 

 lbs., all the better -that is, three shallow 

 supers, one deep super. This would make a 

 hive forty inches high. It will not blow 

 over if it is full of honey. Four shallow 

 supers make a good hive; but by using one 

 deep super as above you can get eight extra 

 combs of brood to fill all this hive space. 

 This combination gives three good results: 

 First, quantity ; second, quality ; and, third, 

 it does away with swarming. Not one col- 

 ony in ten, on an average, will swarm. This 

 year, out of sixty colonies treated this way, 

 not one swarmed, and in a honey-flow, too, 

 that gave 80 lbs. per colony. 

 Washington, la., Aug. 29. 



THE HOFFMAN FRAME IN JAMAICA. 



The Unsuitableness of Loose Frames for Be- 

 ginners; How the Hoffman Can be 

 Handled in Twos and Threes. 



BY GEO. W. PHILLIPS. 



Of all the frames I have used, the regular 

 thick-top-bar HoflFman is by far the best'. 

 The good features that are enumerated are 

 not herein stated for the first time; but I 

 wish s'mply to show how they have recom- 

 mended themselves in my own experience. 



The Hotfman is a self spacing frame. 

 This is one reason why it is discarded by 

 some and adopted by others. Wh<^n I start- 

 ed in the bee business, and before I had pur- 

 chased a stock of supplies, the nucleus that 

 I had bought built up so rapidly that I had 

 to obtain a ten-frame hive with old-style 

 Langstroth frames from a neighbor, and 

 transfer from the shipping-box into it. A 

 heavy flow was on, and in two weeks or le^s 

 every comb was built. But I was a novice, 

 and you should have seen those combs ! 

 Some were veritable slabs of honey, while 

 others were little better than foundation. 

 Now, beginners are not the only ones who 

 make these blunders in spacing. Why, I 

 have been to apiaries owned by fairly com- 

 petent bee-keepers where the unspaced 

 frame was used, to find ill results of the 

 same nature. Spacing frames with the eye 

 is at best a hazardous method, and not to be 

 depended on. 



Every apiarist knows that, as the frames 

 are placed, so the combs are built. Let a 

 frame be spaced badly during a honey-flow. 

 Try to fix the combs after, and see the re- 



