1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



869 



MANIPULATING HIVES FOR INCREASE. 



Alexander's Plan Appreciated because no Brood 

 is Lost; Unripe Honey Sours. 



BY J. A. BEARDEN. 



I have been reading Gleanings for a 

 short time only, but I have not seen any 

 thing therein that I think possesses as much 

 value as the article on page 425, April 15, by 

 Mr. E. W. Alexander. Now, what I con- 

 sider the best thing in these manipulations 

 is the fact that no brood is lost just at the 

 very critical time, i. e., before the honey- 

 flow commences; and you will find by trying 

 his plan that, whenever all of the brood but 

 one comb is placed above the excluding- zinc, 

 the queen seeing nothing but empty combs 

 and bees in plenty to care for brood are at 

 hand, that she will just get down to her 

 work of multiplying as far as her own home 

 is concerned. 



Now you can look at her combs on the 

 fourth or fifth day after making a division 

 of the brood-nest, or the excluding of the 

 queen from her young bees in larval form, 

 and see how much more she has done at 

 egg-laying than usual, and then you will 

 beheve also. 



Now, I have been trying his plan, and I 

 was vexed at myself for not seeing such a 

 plain and excellent way to do such work; 

 and as I worked, I studied all about the 

 plan ; so when I received two valuable 

 queens about that time, I just took some of 

 this brood above the excluder that was all 

 capped over to make up a colony of all young 

 bees to introduce my queens into; and, just 

 to think that, heretofore, a lot of brood 

 would fall out of the cells! and now here 

 all was nice and clean, and no loss of brood, 

 no loss of queen, and the old colony now at 

 this date (ten days after placing brood 

 above the excluder) with a good lot of cap- 

 ped brood. 



But I also tried an experiment on one col- 

 ony, to which I had introduced a strange 

 queen, as I followed the same plan as above, 

 or the young hatching-brood plan; and as 1 

 knew I should lose the uncapped brood I 

 waited until I could make one colony queen- 

 less and broodless for 48 hours, and then I 

 took one frame of this queenless and brood- 

 less colony, with all the adhering bees, to 

 my new-made colony with introduced queen, 

 and placed them at one side of the hive fur- 

 thest from the small bunch of young bees; 

 for I almost forgot to say that this colony 

 of young bees was made up on the previous 

 day, and a small bunch of young bees had 

 hatched out in the mean time. As I had the 

 entrance closed with wire cloth and wooden 

 plugs, these new bees were literally jailed 

 up also; and as I was both quiet and quick 

 at this work, these new bees just took to 

 work for their new-found home and mother, 

 and by the end of that day I had old bees at 

 work feeding and watering brood as though 

 they were their own sisters. 



Now, by watching for your queenless and 

 broodless colonies, and using them one frame 



at a time, you can be sure and safe in intro- 

 ducing them to hives containing a valuable 

 queen. 



Mr. Dan White gives us all the keynote to 

 selling and keeping on selling to the same 

 man, on page 650, and also tells us how to 

 use his uncapping-knife on all combs that he 

 extracts. 



When I commenced to take extracted 

 honey, some 18 years ago, I listened atten- 

 tively to two bee veterans of fine education 

 telling how they got into trouble. One said 

 that he had got a new extractor, and every 

 Saturday he would extract the week's crop 

 of basswood honey, and bottle and send to 

 town to his local grocer; and oh how he did 

 make the change roll in! but after awhile a 

 sort of stop came in the demand, and his 

 grocer friend sent him word to come and 

 see his sour honey. He went, and found it 

 soured, "and," said he, "it took me about 

 ten years to get up my name again where I 

 wanted it to be as an honest producer, and 

 all because I had not found out that bass- 

 wood would sour if extracted too soon after 

 gathering. Now, I have just stepped in to 

 sell only such honey as was capped over, or 

 very nearly so, and now I have a good de- 

 mand for all I can produce, and my guaran- 

 tee is this: If this honey is not satisfactory, 

 let me know and I will pay your money back 

 in full, excepting such as you may have used 

 of this can. I have never had to take back 

 a single can yet." 



Harms, Tenn., June 26. 



OUTDOOR FEEDING. 



The Plan Successful When Robbers are so Bad 

 that Individual Feeding Becomes Danger- 

 ous; a Spray-pump for a Feeder. 



BY W. L. PORTER. 



Wishing to make a visit to Idaho this 

 spring for about four weeks I went through 

 all my hives in April to see that all had suf- 

 ficient stores to last until June 1. On re- 

 turning,, the first week in June, I found a 

 part of my apiary had suffered very badly 

 by being short of stores. Almost every 

 green plant had been cut to the ground, in- 

 cluding alfalfa and all wild flowers on which 

 bees were gathering sufficient honey to live. 

 With the wild flowers cut off they soon ex- 

 hausted the honey held over in eight- frame 

 hives. 



I found the apiary a pitiable sight, the 

 hives full of bees with not a drop of honey 

 in sight, and the eggs and young larvae all 

 consumed by the bees. I had with me 20 

 gallons of feed— honey thinned one-half. By 

 the time I had fed five hives I had the whole 

 apiary upon me, and it looked as if the fed 

 hives would be destroyed by the hordes of 

 robbers. I soon saw that the only way to 

 feed was by outdoor feeding. This I did by 

 laying down hive-covers until I had a string 

 about three rods long, and with the Deming 

 spray- pump fastened to a ten-gallon lard- tub, 

 which has a cover in which I cut a slot to 



