1905 



GLEANINGS IX BEE CULTURE. 



413 



QUEENS' CAPACITY FOR EGG-LAYING. 



The Size of Brood-nest for Comb-honey Produc- 

 tion ; an Interesting Experiment with a 

 Pair of Old "Long-Idea" Hives. 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



In getting my volume of Gleanings for 

 1904 down ready for binding and filing away 

 for future reference or reading, I happened 

 to notice Dr. C. C. Miller's Straw on p. 967 

 of the October 15th issue, where he alludes 

 to what I said in a previous number as 

 "somewhat starthng. " The entire Straw 

 reads as follows: 



"Somewhat startling is the statement 

 made by Mr. Doolittle, p. 925. that 9 Gallup 

 frames, the equivalent of 6| Langstroths, 

 are enough to ' entertain the best queen to 

 her full capacity as to egg- laying. ' Allow- 

 ing I of a frame for pollen and honey, and 

 counting that the remaining six frames will 

 be entirely occupied by the queen, that fig- 

 ures up only a little more than 2000 eggs as 

 the queen's daily stint. Yet isn't it Mr. 

 Doolittle who tells us that a queen goes as 

 high as 5000 eggs in a day?" 



As there are some things of more impor- 

 tance than the number of eggs a queen can 

 lay, I should like to say something further 

 in this matter. A very important fact in 

 this case is, that what I said on p. 925 was 

 for the comb-honey producer, not for the 

 one producing extracted honey. But I think 

 I hear some one saying, " Does the working 

 for comb honey decrease the queen's egg- 

 laying capacity any? or does the working of 

 a hive for extracted honey have any thing 

 to do with the capacity of the queen for 

 egg-laying?" 1 answer yes. to both ques- 

 tions. There is something about extracting 

 honey that causes the bees to feed the 

 queen, or force her egg-laying powers to 

 such an extent that she will give more than 

 double the eggs, if she has comb room, that 

 she will when no extracting is done, and 

 thus a queen is coaxed to produce and devel- 

 op all the embryo eggs she has in her ova- 

 ries, in the shortest possible time, while un- 

 der normal circumstances she will be laying 

 up to hev full capacity when not producing 

 half the number of eggs she does under the 

 stimulating influences which come through 

 the bees when the colony is worked for ex- 

 tracted honey. Let me illustrate: 



In the latter seventies I became quite en- 

 thusiastic over what was known as the 

 "Long-idea hive," as recommended by D. 

 L. Adair, a prominent bee-keeper of those 

 days. I made two of these hives, which 

 were 4 ft. long and held 32 frames, instead 



of being 13| in. long and holding 9 Gallup 

 frames, as I was then using almost exclu- 

 sively in my apiary. In the spring I select- 

 ed two average colonies; and when the 9 

 frames were pretty well filled with brood, 

 and covered with bees, they were set over 

 into these four-foot hives. At the same 

 time, I selected two other colonies as near 

 like the first two as possible, one to be 

 worked for extracted honey on the tiering- 

 up plan, and the other to be worked for 

 comb honey, the same as I had been in the 

 habit of doing, so as to test the matter of 

 these long hives for both comb and extract- 

 ed honey, side by side with the older plans. 

 In due time the two long hives were filled 

 out with 32 combs each, while the other two 

 were held down to their 9 frames each, as 

 formerly, giving the two worked for comb 

 honey the same number of sections each, 

 and those worked for extracted honey the 

 same number of combs each, and all worked 

 to the best advantage possible. Now for 

 the result: 



When the basswood harvest arrived, the 

 queen in the long hive (worked for extract- 

 ed honey) had brood in every one of the S2 

 frames of comb, to the amount of about 20 

 combs solid full, while the one worked for 

 comb honey, having 32 combs, had brood in 

 only 13 combs, the same amounting to not 

 over 9 frames full, the rest of the comb be- 

 ing occupied with honey, which ought to 

 and would have gone into the sections had 

 the brood- chamber of the hive been of the 

 size it should have been. So the queen from 

 the extracting hive was laying about 5000 

 eggs daily (as Dr. Miller says I admit a 

 queen can), to where the one in the comb- 

 honey hive was giving only about 2000. each 

 queen evidently laying to her full capacity 

 under their diff'erent environments, those 

 environments being the same as the bees 

 always allow, so far as my experience goes, 

 under like circumstances, for I have exper- 

 imented largely along these hnes. All four 

 of these queens were reared the season be- 

 fore, so were at their best. The one in this 

 long extracting-hive died that fall of old 

 age, while the other three lived to do good 

 work for two more seasons, as my record 

 for the different hives tells me by referring 

 to it. 



Perhaps the reader would be interested to 

 know of the results in honey. This long 

 hive worked for extracted honey gave 566 

 lbs. that season; and the other, worked on 

 the tiering-up plan, gave 406. This shows 

 that, with only 9 combs for brooding, the 

 bees from the same produced as much sur- 

 plus into 1^0 as did the 20 combs of solid 

 brood. My idea is that the cost in honey of 

 rearing that extra brood in the long hive 

 was so great, right in the honey harvest, 

 that they failed to give about 1200 lbs., 

 which logic says they should have given, had 

 each stored in "proportion to the brood rear- 

 ed. But how about those worked for comb 

 honey? The one worked with the 32 combs 

 gave 49 lbs., with the 32 combs nearly solid 

 full of honey in the fall, while the other 



