January, 1909. 



Am^Fican Hee Journal 



I decided to use thcni on tlie hives, as I 

 never liked the interior of the hives to 

 get wet. Of recent years I have been 

 using "patent" roofing and hke it very 

 much for making liives rain-tiglit. It 

 is cheap, especially if you can be so for- 

 tunate as to get a ln| (if condemned 



stuff at the factory. The factories would 

 sooner l)urn it than let you have it, still, 

 I have known them to be generous 

 enough to sell it for less than half price, 

 and for hive-covers it is fully as good 

 as the perfected material. Try it, if 

 vou can. 



«^, 



locfor Niljer^ 

 (uestlon-Bo: 



ancc, for likely they had quite a hit of honey 

 before you ft*d. 



3. Yes, that brood will probably hatch out 

 all rif^ht. 



4. Don't bcKJn till bees arc flying freely, 

 and hardly ihc-n if they don't need it. If 

 they have proper pasturage no need to feed 

 longer than enough to give them plenty to 

 last till the harvest, and leave no empty room 

 in the brood-chamber when the harvest be- 

 gins. It is not likely that in your locality 

 there will be dearth enough any time before 

 the harvest to stop brood-rearing, but if there 

 docs come a time when for a week or more 

 the bees can gather nothing, then it will be 

 well to feed daily or every other day, 



_ 5; As far south as you are, cellar-wintering 

 IS hardly advisable. 



Send Questions either to the office of the Am en can Uce J'.urnal or Lm 



DR. C. C. MILLER. Mareng-o. lit. 



Dr. Miller does not answer Questions by mail. 



Length of the T-Super. 



Isn't a T-super too short to cover the top 

 of a hive? What do you do about it? 



Answer. — Nail on one end a cleat ^ x J^ 

 inch and as long as the outside width of the 

 super. I prefer to have it tacked on rather 

 loosely, for some of the time I prefer to have 

 a space left at the back end of the super 

 for ventilation. 



Bees Leaving Hives in Cellar — Brood 

 Foundation in Hives for Swarms, 



1. I put my bees into a cellar for winter- 

 ing. I have had trouble with one colony. 

 The bees seem to want to get out. I have a 

 screen frame over the front. No matter what 

 time of the day I go near the hive, they 

 keep out constantly, crawling on the screen. 

 Are they affected with some disease ? 



2. Last spring I had trouble with the same 

 colony. At the time I hived them the swarm 

 was a large one. After 2 weeks' time I put 

 2 supers on, but they did not fill either dur- 

 ing the honey-flow. What do you suppose 

 was the reason? 



3. Is it always necessary to put brood- 

 foundation in the frames when hiving a 

 swarm? Wisconsin. 



Answers. — i. Some bees are more excitable 

 than others. It may be that they are fairly 

 quiet when you do not go near them with a 

 light. The only disease likely to make them 

 uneasy is diarrhea, and it is too early for that 

 to trouble much yet. Likely ^that screen does 

 more harm than good. If a bee tries to get 

 out and is hindered by the screen, it sets up a 

 racket that makes the others uneasy. 



2. Likely the flow did not continue long 

 enough after they had the brood-chamber 

 filled. Their first care is to fill the brood- 

 chamber, and super work comes in after that. 

 At the end of 2 weeks there may have still 

 been room in the brood-chamber, or the flow 

 may have then stopped. If other colonies 

 were storing in supers after this colony had 

 its brood-chamber filled, I don't know what 

 the trouble was. 



3. The bees will build combs without any 

 foundation at all. but they will probably 

 build them so crooked that you might as well 

 have a box-hive. They will build combs 

 straight if you have foundation only an inch 

 deep, but in that case they have altogether 

 too much drone-comb. It is economy to fill 

 the frames with foundation. 



Miller T-Super — Directions for Mak- 

 ing. 



As I am looking for the best super, I 

 thought possibly you would sell me a T-super 

 or two, as you have them arranged, which 

 might be a gflpat help in getting others right. 

 I have had a few bees for many years, and 

 feel sure there must be something better than 

 a section-holder. Pennsylvania. 



Answer. — You are wise to want a model 

 to pattern after in making any kind of bee- 

 fixture. Yet a T-super is so exceedingly sim- 

 ple that a pattern is hardly necessary. I could 



spare you a super, but you ought to be able 

 to get one from a supply dealer near home, 

 saving heavy cost for transportation. Perhaps 

 after I tell you how mine are made you will 

 not care for a pattern. A T-super is a plain 

 box without top or bottom, and for an 8-frame 

 hive is 17^3 x i2j.^ x 4!-^ inches, inside meas- 

 ure. That's for the usual 4'/i X4;4 section. 

 Of course, the depth must be different for 

 sections of different height. If there is to 

 to be any shrinkage of the wood, the depth 

 nuist be more to allow for it. To support 

 tlie sections at each end, a strip of tin 5^ inch 

 wide is nailed on. To support the T-tins, 

 pieces of sheet-iron ij^ x i inch are nailed on; 

 one in the middle, and one half-way between 

 the middle and the end. Each piece is nailed 

 on the long way across the super, the one 

 end projecting I4 inch or more into the super. 

 A later plan, which is perhaps better, is to 

 use a staple, an inch wide, driving it into 

 the bottom J4 inch or so from the edge, and 

 then bending it over so as to be flat with 

 the bottom of the super. The staple is driven 

 in deep enough so that when done there will 

 be a support of J4 inch or more for the T-tin. 



Uniting Purchased Bees with Nuclei. 



If you had some nuclei you wished to 

 strengthen by giving a pound or two of bees 

 purchased from some other bee-keeper, what 

 precautions would you use in uniting the 

 purchased bees to the nuclei? Iowa. 



Answer. — Might do one of several ways. 

 One way is to sprinkle all with flour. Or, 

 sprinkle thoroughly with sweetened water. 

 Or, shake them up in a dishpan till they 

 don't know "where they were at." Or, put 

 the added bees in an upper story for a few 

 davs, separated from the lower storv by wire- 

 cloth. 



Tar-Paper Wrapping for Outdoor 



Colonies — Feeding for Winter 



and Spring, 



1. I have 46 colonies of bees outdoors on 

 the summer stands, in S-frame hives. They 

 are sheltered on the west, north, and north- 

 west, by buildings. Will that keep them warm 

 enough without wrapping them with tar-pa- 

 per? 



2. I fed my bees for 20 days, commencing 

 October i — each colony one quart of syrup, 

 half sugar and half water. Is that sufficient 

 for winter? 



3. I looked through the colnies some days 

 ago, and they had some frames pretty well 

 filled with capped brood. Will that brood 

 do any good? 



4. I want to feed in the spring. What 

 time is best to commence feeding, and how 

 long shall I feed? 



5. The thermometer hardly ever gets below 

 zero here. I don't like cellar-wintering. 



Kentucky. 



Answers. — i. In Kentucki^ there ought to 

 be no trouble about their being warm enough 

 without tarred paper, situated as you de- 

 scribe. 



2. The probability is that they have abund- 



Late Drone-Rearing. 



_ I find that one of my colonics is still rear- 

 ing drones. The queen looks all 'right. She 

 has been one of the best among 65. She is 

 supposed to be young, as she came through 

 the mail in May, and I started her with a 

 small bunch of bees, and she built up a strong 

 colony. I never noticed any drones until 

 'att-Iy. Utah. 



Answer. — The queen may be all right, and 

 she may be all wrong. It sometimes happens 

 that a colony takes a notion to cherish some 

 drones after drones are generally killed off, 

 keeping them through the winter, while the 

 queen is all right, but the fear is that your 

 queen has become a drone-layer, even if she is 

 not old. You can probably tell by the sealed 

 brood next spring, or even now if there is 

 any sealed brood present. If you find cap- 

 pings of worker-cells flat, that's all right. If 

 they are raised and rounded, like so many 

 little marbles, the queen is a drone-layer, and 

 should be killed. To be sure, there has been 

 known such a thing as a queen getting over 

 being a drone-layer, as W. M. Whitney has 

 reported, but you better not count on thar. 



Best Hive to Begin With, Etc. 



1. I am going to start bee-keeping in the 

 spring and would like to know what is the 

 best kind of hive to get, etc., and whether 

 an 8. or a 10 frame hive would be the best. 



2. I also wish to ask if you receive visitors 

 at your apiary. Illinois. 



Answers. — i. If you are going to work for 

 extracted honey, have nothing less than a 10- 

 frame dovetailed hive. If for comb honey 

 the same thing, unless you expect to give 

 very closest attention to your bees, for an 

 8-frame hive requires closer attention to avoid 

 starvation, and besides, for best results, an 

 8-frame hive must sometimes be run 2-story 

 in order to give the queen enough room be- 

 fore the harvest. I run for comb honey alto- 

 gether and use 8-frame dovetailed hives, but 

 if I were starting afresh I would do some 

 little studying as to whether I'd use 8 or 10 

 frames. 



2. While visitors occasionally come, and are 

 welcome to see what is going on, I'm afraid 

 the visit is usually a disappointment, for gen- 

 erally we are so crowded that it is impossible 

 to pay that degree of courtesy that might 

 otherwise be desirable. 



Uniting Strong Colonies. 



1. Last fall I had more colonies- of bees 

 than I cared to winter, and not being able to 

 sell any, I united them. They seemed well 

 supplied with honey and bees, so that uniting 

 made them very strong in bees. Is there 

 danger of their starving before spring ? 



2. Was it right to unite them when they 

 were all so strong? Bee-books say nothing 

 about uniting any but the weak ones. When 

 is the best time to proceed in such cases, 

 and how should I proceed ? Illinois. 



Answers. — i. As a rule, two colonies united 

 will use less stores in winter than if left 

 separate. So if they were sufficiently sup- 

 plied with stores to winter separately, and you 

 united stores as well as bees, there ought 

 to be no trouble. But if you merely added 

 to a colony the bees of another colony, leav- 

 ing only the stores of the one colon/, there 

 might be trouble. 



2. If 2 colonies are each very strong, it 

 may not be advisable to unite them. Gen- 

 erally, however, even in an apiary of what 

 might be called strong colonies, more or 

 less of the number are not so strong at 

 the others, and if one wishes to reduce th* 

 number of colonies it might be well to unite. 

 A good time to unite is about the close of 



