1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



961 



doubt many others keep down increase the 

 same as I do. In the first place, all of my 

 queens are clipped early in the spring, and 

 some colonies are run for comb honey and 

 some for extracted. Several colonies swarm- 

 ed this season that had sixteen L. frames 

 full of comb above them, and did not store, 

 previous to their swarming, any honey 

 above their brood-nest. Of course, they 

 returned to their hive for lack of a flying 

 queen, and then I swarmed them artificially, 

 giving eight empty frames in the brood- 

 nest, and eight to sixteen above the brood- 

 nest, using a queen-excluder. The brood is 

 placed in a new location with but few bees, 

 and after that the brood from each hive 

 that is swarmed is placed underneath the 

 first until I have a stack of five. After the 

 brood is all capped the upper stories can be 

 removed and placed over any other hive that 

 is being run for extracted honey, and other 

 bodies of brood can be placed under the first 

 hive, where I place all brood from swarm- 

 ing colonies. 



After the swarming fever is well oVer I 

 put a queen-excluder in this brood colony, 

 confining the new queen to the lower story, 

 and am always very careful that no unsealed 

 brood is above the brood-nest. Of course, 

 this makes a powerful hive, and in a very 

 short time they will fill 24 to 32 frames full 

 of honey for extracting purposes. As above 

 stated, I always wait until the swarming is 

 over before I confine the queen to the lower 

 story in this new colony; and when brood is 

 placed under, all queen-cells are cut down 

 from such brood-frames; and usually I take 

 an upper story off and give to another hive, 

 as I always record the time when each body 

 of brood was placed. In this way there is 

 always a certainty as to the condition of the 

 brood, whether or not it is past the stage 

 when bees could raise a queen from it. 



The colonies that are run for comb honey 

 nearly always swarm before they go above, 

 even on "baited" supers. After they re- 

 turn they are given the "shook method" 

 and placed on eight frames with just start- 

 ers in wired frames; after two days sections 

 are given them unless I give them one comb 

 below ; ' then sections are given them at 

 once, and the queen won't bother the sec- 

 tions above. 



You see, by my method I can keep down 

 the increase of colonies to a great extent; 

 but to keep down swarming is beyond me, 

 and I think most of the bee-keepers are in 

 the same boat; but confining strong colonies 

 to sections greatly encourages the desire to 

 swarm. 



Dayton, Ohio, July 6. 



[Hiving on an empty brood-nest or start- 

 ers is getting to be more and more the or- 

 thodox practice among progressive bee-men. 

 The plan described above, while not new, I 

 believe to be excellent. Usually the two or 

 three story extracting colonies will not 

 swarm, and I am surprised that our corre- 

 spondent should have swarming to the ex- 

 tent indicated. —Ed.] 



H. R. BOARDMAN. 



The Man Who Has the Reputation of Winter- 

 ing Indoors without Loss; an Interview with 

 One of the Brainiest Bee-keepers in all 

 Beedom; Essential Factors in Cellar 

 or Repository Wintering. 



BY E. R. ROOT. 



Just about 25 years ago wintering was the 

 all-absorbing unsolved problem. No one 

 really seemed to be master of the situation, 

 and in the meantime bees were lost and 

 hopes blasted. So great were the losses 

 that this journal had, and maintained for 

 a time, a department entitled " Blasted 

 Hopes." Various causes were assigned for 

 the loss. One was, too much pollen in the 

 combs; and this gave rise to a long-drawn- 

 out discussion on the pollen theory. An- 

 other was honey-dew; and still another, dark 

 fall honey. As a matter of fact we now 

 know that none of these were the real 

 cause. 



In the winter of 1881 and spring of 1882, 

 when three-fourths of all the bees in the 

 Northern States were lost, and the remnant 

 were in weak condition, the situation came 

 almost to a crisis. Many were going out of 

 the business. Along about this time there 

 loomed up on the apicultural horizon a man 

 who "wintered bees without loss." It was 

 none other than the subject of this sketch, 

 of East Townsend, 0., one of the brainiest 

 bee-keepers in all beedom. Winter after 

 winter he put all his bees in his upground 

 repository and in his outyard bee-cellar, and 

 in the following spring he would bring out 

 the same number he put in, all in good 

 healthy condition. This journal had the 

 honor of giving a picture of the man away 

 back in 1883— just 22 years ago. While his 

 success up to that time had been phenome- 

 na!, he has during these years continued to 

 winter his bees, except one winter when he 

 tried an experiment outdoors, the results of 

 which were far from satisfactory. Again, 

 in 1889 Gleanings gave a picture of the 

 man, of his bee-cellar, and told me the se- 

 crets of his success. 



As wintering indoors is being revived 

 again I decided this summer to take an auto- 

 mobile trip to Mr. H. R. Boardman and to 

 H. G. Quirin, the queen-breeder, of Parker- 

 town, a little further on. 



In the latter part of July my son and I 

 presented ourselves at the residence of Mr. 

 Boardman. We halted the machine under a 

 big evergreen, where, whom should we 

 meet but the same Mr. Boardman, looking 

 scarcely a day older, even though over 20 

 years had elapsed since I had first seen him. 

 Notwithstanding he is past, by two years, 

 the allotted age of threescore and ten, he 

 was active and alert, and his enthusiasm 

 over bee problems seemed as warm as ever. 

 Feeling that I had before me a master of 

 the science of indoor wintering, if not the 

 best-posted man on the subject in the world, 

 I fired questions at him at a rapid clip. In 

 all the twenty and more years his methods 



