GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1185 



needle, heartsease, goldenrod, and some oth- 

 er wild flowers. Maple, fruit-trees, wil- 

 lows, and persimmons help along a little in 

 spring. Now, if all these could be depend- 

 ed on, or if only white clover and Spanish 

 needle would always yield in their season, I 

 should get along pretty well with my eight- 

 frame hives, using one story as brood- 

 chamber under the comb-honey supers. Too 

 often, however, the one or the other flow is 

 cut short, or fails entirely, or the suspense 

 between clover and the fall flow is so long 

 (the clover being dried out during July and 

 August) that the bees run out of stores in 

 these small hives. There I am— a timber 

 humming with wild bees two miles off, and 

 small apiaries all around me. Outdoor feed- 

 ing is out of the question, as strange bees 

 would get more than my own. Of course, 

 feeding in the hive can be done, and has to 

 be done, but it is a nuisance, and requires 

 too much work and precious time. Would 

 not a great deal of this trouble and annoy- 

 ance be avoided by using larger hives where 

 a greater amount of stores could be kept 

 near the brood handy for the bees to draw 

 on than is practicable in an ordinary eight- 

 frame hive? For this reason a ten-frame 

 hive would probably be better; yet a ten- 

 frame hive with a new swarm, on one-inch 

 starters, would have to be too much con- 

 tracted for best results in producing comb 

 honey, as sections over dummies are not 

 well filled. For this and other reasons I 

 prefer an eight-frame hive for comb honey. 

 By keeping plenty of filled combs on hand, 

 colonies short of stores could be helped out 

 without having to resort to the sticky job of 

 feeding syrup every time. But if I don't 

 see the whole thing wrong, please tell me; 

 if I do, work could be saved and many other 

 advantages gained by the following plan, 

 which I have tried on only a limited scale, 

 but with apparent success. 



Furnish each eight-frame brood- chamber 

 with one section of the Heddon hive (or 

 some shallow extracting-super) to go on 

 top. Many good queens in spring fill more 

 than eight frames; but such a half-depth 

 story will give almost any queen enough ad- 

 ditional room, and will keep the hive suffi- 

 ciently from being crowded and the bees 

 from swarming till the main flow opens; 

 and 1 think it is preferable to adding a full- 

 sized story, as the bees build up faster in 

 spring when they have not too much room 

 at a time. Of course, there will be some 

 colonies that do not need more than eight 

 frames till the flow opens; but let even 

 those work in this upper section a while be- 

 fore a super is given. It will give them the 

 "upstairs fever," and when the super is 

 put on they will enter it more readily, espe- 

 cially if they are Italians. 



Now, when the flow is well on, these up- 

 per sections will contain quite a little honey 

 and some brood. Now shake out the bees 

 and pile these sections six to ten high on 

 weak colonies which will soon be strength- 

 ened by brood hatching in these sections. If 

 ample ventilation is given, these piles ought 



not to swarm, but hold big colonies which 

 will hll them. The other hives are now in 

 fine condition for super work. There will 

 not be that rim of honey between the top- 

 bars of the frames and the brood. That rim 

 of honey was in the upper section, which is 

 off; and if the bees want some honey above 

 the brood they have to put it in the supers, 

 where we want the light honey. Thus the 

 work in the sections will be taken up fast- 

 er; and should a drouth overtake the bees 

 during the summer, and the honey in the 

 eight-frame hives become exhausted, as was 

 the case here "last summer, those half-depth 

 stories can be gotten and put on again with 

 the honey they contain, and the bees will 

 not be obliged to empty the supers and stain 

 the sections. If there is a fall flow, get ore 

 of these upper half-stories filled for each 

 hive besides the honey the brood-chamber 

 contains; for, better give the bees too much 

 than too little. If, next spring, it is not all 

 needed it will do no harm. It might be 

 needed even during the summer; and I think 

 it is an advantage, especially if bees are 

 wintered outside, to have this horizontal 

 passage through the brood-nest. Thus I 

 can keep my eight-frame Langstroth brood- 

 nest during the summer. I don't want any 

 thing smaller to hive new swarms in, and 

 have a divided chamber to winter in. 



Many a more experienced brother might 

 smile at some of my notions; but when you 

 get your foot in it as I did this year— toul 

 brood, starvation, absconding, and a few 

 more doubtfully pleasant things— well, it 

 sets you at plannmg; and as we are some- 

 times liable to improve from hay to straw 

 when we adopt something new, I take the 

 liberty of asking your, kind advice in the 

 matter I have mentioned. 



New Memphis, 111., Oct. 18. 



[Your plan is perfectly feasible; in fact, 

 if you will turn to some of our back volumes 

 you will find where, some four or five years 

 ago, I advocated something very similar to 

 this. My plan was not so much to keep 

 down swarming as to get sulky colonies to 

 work in the supers. I advocated giving 

 such a super of shallow extracting- combs; 

 then, when the bees got nicely started in 

 them to work, taking it away and giving 

 them a super of sections containing full 

 sheets. In almost every case the bees 

 would go into such supers with a rush. The 

 extracting-combs partly filled were put on 

 to other hives as coaxers to get the bees to 

 go above. When they got nicely to work, 

 the same coaxer was put on to another hive 

 for the same purpose. When the combs 

 were capped over they were set aside to be 

 extracted, and other combs used to take 

 their place. 



Several modifications of this plan have 

 been proposed, and the one you describe is 

 one of them. If the supers are taken off 

 soon enough there will be but very little 

 brood reared in them. I found that an ordi- 

 nary eight- frame brood- nest would give a 

 queen all the room she required, providing 



