1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1017 



fully, and they started to work at rnce, and 

 now have a ten-frame hive two-thirds full 

 of comb, honey, and brood. 



The amusing part of these bees is, they 

 were the girl's mother's, and that dear old 

 lady carefully watched them through April 

 and nearly all of May, and finally concluded 

 they were not going to swarm, and went on 

 a little visit; and the very day she left they 

 swarmed! 



They had but the one colony in an old box 

 hive, and the girls told me laughingly they 

 were very choice expensive bees. The moth- 

 er has six or seven grown-up children, and 

 the girls said mother got each of them to 

 give her a dollar to get the bees with. 



The colony cost but one dollar, yet mother 

 got at least six dollars to buy them; and yet 

 people prate of " foxy grandpa." 



The very day after this, Sunday at that, 

 another neighbor had a swarm. He is a 

 young man with three old colonies, all in 

 box hives, and he came after Mr. Bee to 

 help him. He said, plaintively, he had put 

 them in the hive, but they wouldn't stay in. 

 We hurried over there, Mr. Bee getting his 

 veil, and the young man's mother whacked 

 off a piece of the netting she covered her 

 dining-table with, and draped him graceful- 

 ly with it. These bees had gone to the oth- 

 er extreme, and were lovingly clustered in a 

 bunch on a chicken-fence. The never fail- 

 ing sheet was called into action, and my 

 "pardner" and his Coggshall brush soon 

 had them safely hived. This colony has 

 since done splendidly, nearly filling their 

 ten- frame hive. He has put his swarms in 

 the dovetailed movable-frame hives. 



The two swarms we bought of a neighbor 

 have excelled all others around, but we gave 

 them, for the most part, full frames of 

 foundation. My own individual colony is 

 the best for old black bees, having a ten- 

 frame hive full of bees, comb, and honey, 

 and two sheets of extracting- frames in the 

 super pulled out. I have sent for a golden 

 Italian queen for this colony, and am daily 

 expecting her. Our three other colonies 

 have nice queens recently introduced— one a 

 golden Italian, whose bees are old enough so 

 they work in the field, and the other— a red- 

 clover queen at present still in her cage in 

 the hive, and a tested three-bander, out 

 July 11, and laying to-day, July 13. 



There has been but a very poor honey-flow 

 here— a little fruit-bloom early that cold 

 rains mostly ruined, and about a week of 

 white clover. But the golden Italian's bees 

 are such hustlers that they go out in the 

 rain to hunt honey; and when introduced to 

 her present family there were but about 

 four frames of bees. Her first bees hatched 

 June 6; and now, July 12, she has nine fully 

 covered frames, and eight of these are full 

 of eggs, brood, and hatching bees. She has 

 more honey in her hive than the others— 

 sealed honey— and lots more eggs. Her 

 bees are pretty, but not so yellow as those 

 we saw in East St. Louis, so I tried for yel- 

 lower ones for my colony. Of course, we 

 want honey; but, aside from that, we love 



the bees; and if Spanish needle fails to< 

 make much honey my colony shall have all 

 the sugar syrup it needs to winter on. 



Another of our friends has a colony he 

 has been expecting to swarm since April, 

 and on our way home one evening I said to 

 him, " Bees swarmed yet? " 



"Naw! " he said, so disgusted. "I told 

 my wife if they didn't swarm soon I was 

 going to kick the blamed old gum over." 



It doesn't seem hard to hive swarming 

 bees. I know I could do it. All Mr. Bee 

 has hived have gone in without trouble, andl 

 stayed there, and no one was stung. 



But it may be like bread-making. I was 

 not taught to cook before I was married; 

 and as I watched my good old mother-in-law 

 mixing bread I said to myself, "Hump! 

 any dunce could do that." But some of the 

 bricks Mr. Bee ate under the name of bread 

 a year or so later, when we went to house- 

 keeping, convinced me there was more to it 

 than ' ' a simple twist of the wrist and the 

 way you hold your mouth." And so it may 

 be with bees and swarms. 



I wish to tell, another time, of some trans- 

 ferring from box to movable-frame hives, 

 and also some dividing of colonies, and the 

 consequences. 



Ladue, Mo. 



A TEST OF THE ALEXANDER PLAN OF IN- 

 i CREASE. 



Also a Test of the Nucleus Plan. 



BY F. L. DAY. 



Last spring, when I read in an April num- 

 ber of Gleanings, page 425, the plan of Mr, 

 Alexander for securing both increase and 

 honey at the same time I was much inter- 

 ested. Here was what I had been looking 

 for, but did not expect to find inside the 

 lines of the bee industry— a double crop of 

 honey and 100 per cent increase of colonies. 

 If not, indeed, a short and easy way to for- 

 tune, it was at least something approaching 

 it. I selected four colonies of medium 

 strength, having prolific queens, to test the 

 scheme. April 22 the queen and one frame 

 of brood and bees was taken from each of 

 colonies Nos. 7, 9, 12, 13, and then placed 

 in an empty hive under the brood-nest, with 

 a queen-excluder between the two stories. 

 To this one frame of brood and bees had 

 been added nine good combs, some of them 

 having a little honey. On June 1st, in the 

 forenoon, I took the upper stories from the 

 four hives and carried each to a new stand, 

 intending to give them ripe queen-cells in 

 the afternoon. Coming out from dinner 

 about one o'clock I was just in time to see 

 the first swarm of the season. It was from 

 the lower story of No. 12. I was just in 

 time to catch the clipped queen. I examin- 

 ed what had been the upper story of No. 12. 

 It had a lot of queen-cells, some of them al- 

 most ready to hatch. Two of the other up- 

 per stories also had queen-cells. Here was 

 75 per cent of swarming, actual or antici- 



