l-'cljruary, 1909. 



American Hee Journal 



liusincss, but I won't just yet. Mintl and 

 hand run thpt way, and both must liavo 

 something to do. 



With this digression, I will proceed 

 to say that 1 do not know how success- 

 ful I shall be with my efforts to intro- 

 duce in the way indicated, but I am not 

 expecting tnany failures. I will say fur- 

 ther, regarding the method, tliat as soon 

 as the combs are all in the new hive I 

 lay the cage back on top of the frames 

 and put on the super and cover as be- 

 fore, and do not remove the cork from 

 the candy till the bees have had a few 

 hours in which to realize their queen- 

 lessness. 



Looking into one hive a few days ago, 

 I lound the cage empty and quite a good- 

 sized ball of bees on the frames in front 

 of the cage. This did not give me much 

 concern as I had had a similar experi- 

 ence before. 



A year ago I attempted to introduce 

 3 queens by the method I have been des- 

 cribing. The work was done by another, 

 but I got out in time to note results. 

 One colony proved later to be queenlcss. 

 On the frames of another colony I found 

 a large ball of bees, and on smoking 

 the bees enough to make them disperse 

 I found they had had a queen in their 

 midst. Afterward I saw her on the 

 combs apparently uninjured. Her col- 

 ony is a large one now. I have had 

 very good success in introducing queens 

 so late in the fall that there would be no 

 brood in the hive, sealed or unsealed. 

 The danger is that there may be a little 

 unsealed brood and eggs that escape 

 observation. Those having extracting 

 hives or supers above excluders, have 

 an almost certain means of getting 

 queens safely introduced; Take ofif the 

 hive or super when there is a goodly 

 number of bees in it and set it down on 

 a flat bottom-board, put some thin wed- 

 ges under 2 corners of the hive and leave 

 the bees confined for about 48 hours. 

 Then put the cage with the queen on 

 top of the frames with the cork removed, 

 and the bees proceed at once to release 

 her, being hungry for a queen. I like 

 this as well as the nucleus-box plan, and 

 it is a little less trouble. The bees and 

 queen can be united with any colony 

 you see fit to make queenless if you use 

 well-known precautions. 



I have just now introduced a valu- 

 able queen in this way and united with 

 a colony that has bees and stores enough 

 for safe wintering. I will modify this 

 a little by saying that I killed the queen 

 of an 8- frame colony, then set the 

 frames over into a lo-frame hive before 

 uniting, as the colony with queen was in 

 a lo-frame hive. A few days after the 

 union I found brood in 2 combs in the 

 lower hive, and as the upper one had 

 but 8 there was just rpom for these 2 

 combs in it. After putting brood in the 

 center I took away the lower hive, put- 

 ting the upper one in its place, then set 

 the lower hive 8 or 10 feet in front of 

 the old stand, closed so that only a few 

 bees could get in or out at once, and the 

 bees soon carried what honey was in it — 

 somewhere. I reckon most of it went 

 into the hive on the old stand. 



I do not now use many hives of the 

 8-frame dovetailed size for rearing 

 brood at the season of the year when 

 brood is being reared to make work- 



ers for the harvest. Having a good 

 supply of hives holding 9, 10, and 11 

 frames, 1 use a good many of these 

 in the spring. My practice is to set 

 the combs of the 8-frame hives into 

 the larger hives in the fall, and fill up 

 with combs of sealed honey if I have 

 them, .and, if not, with frames of 

 drawn comb, and then feed sugar syrup 

 till I get the hives of ihe desired 

 weight. Then when the honey har- 

 vest comes I leave the strongest colo- 

 nies in the large hives and return the 

 weaker ones to the 8-frame hives. As 

 I use largely of drawn combs when 

 hiving swarms, if the swarm is not 

 unusually large, I hive it in an 8-fram# 

 liive, and sometimes contract by means 

 of dummies to 6 frames when working 

 for comb honey. Sections are filled 

 rapidly by not very strong colonies 

 when thus contracted. But these con- 

 tracted brood-chambers must be seen 

 to later. 



If I were to begin bee-keeping again, 

 and my choice of hives were confined to 

 the hives now in general use, I think 

 I should begin with the lo-frame Langs- 

 troth hive. It is easy to make an 8 or 

 9-frame hive out of it if desired, and 

 then have it a lo-frame hive for winter. 

 It is a good hive for both comb and 

 extracted honey. I will here say what I 

 should have said before, that an 8-frame 

 hive put on top of another 8-franie hive 

 for enlargement of the brood-chamber 

 is an awkward makeshift for a hive 

 wide enough to take all of the combs 

 needed for the most prolific queens. 

 There is more enlargement at one time 

 than is generally needed, and two hive- 

 bodies of standard depth are not de- 

 sirable for wintering. 



If I were to work altogether for ex- 

 tracted honey I feel pretty sure that I 

 should use the Dadant hive, or a slight 

 modification of it. I have used some 

 of them for many years, and know of 

 nothing better for the lazy man and the 

 man busied with other things. Just think 

 how a queen must have to hump herself 

 to fill ID or II Quinby frames with 

 brood. She so seldom thinks of going 

 up into the super that it is not worth 

 while to use excluders. All one has to 

 do is to put on supers, and the bees 

 do the rest all season, and seldom think 

 about swarming. If it had not been 

 for the fact that extracted honey got a 

 black eye some years ago, I would have 

 more of these hives today. I predict 

 for them a big future. 



Many of the hives in use require more 

 manipulation than the profits of the 

 business justify or ever will justify. 

 What wonders the Aspinwall non- 

 swarming hive will work in the indus- 

 try I do not know, and never shall 

 know, as it is so near "sundown" for 

 me. The Dadant hive is almost a non- 

 swarmer. The man who expects suc- 

 cess with them must give heed to the 

 kind of queens he uses. Queens of just 

 ordinary prolificness will not do. 



I was so interested in the lo-frame 

 divisible brood-chamber hive described 

 by Mr. Scholl last year in a letter to 

 Harry Lathrup, that I went to work 

 and made a few, intending to try some 

 of them this season, but the season 

 has been such a poor one that I got 



nothing done except a few combs built 

 in 2 or 3 sections. 



Perhaps I ought to have said before 

 that the nucleus-box is a good thing 

 when bees above excluders are not 

 available ; and perhaps I ought to have 

 said that when setting combs from g, 

 10 and II frame hives over into 8- 

 franie hives at the beginning of the 

 honey-flow, I put the combs with most 

 brood into 8-frame hives, and if there 

 is an excess I give them to colonies that 

 need strengthening, or else make nu- 

 clei. And perhaps I ought to have 

 said that the reason why I use the 

 .A.bbott plan for introducing queens is 

 because that is the lazy man's way. and 

 because I think the failures will not be 

 enough to hurt much. 



A safe way to introduce queens is: 

 Buy a nucleus of one or more frames 

 with queen, and let the other fellow 

 take all the risk. 



The practice of some queen-breeders 

 to classify queens as untested, select un- 

 tested, tested, and select tested, never 

 struck me as being an altogether fair 

 way of doing business. An untested 

 queen is an untested queen, and who is 

 to say with any degree of positiveness 

 that one is better than another? It may 

 be a little diff'erent with tested queens, 

 but it seems to me that the man who 

 buys a tested queen is entitled to as 

 good a one as there is below the breed- 

 ing class. If some buyers have to take 

 the culls, other buyers should get as 

 good as there are in the class they buy 

 from. I will not go so far as to ad- 

 vise bee-keepers to boycott the breed- 

 ers who make these distinctions, but 

 I have felt all along, since they began 

 to be made, that somebody was not get- 

 ting a square deal. 



Leon, Iowa. 



Swarm-Control and Prepar- 

 ing for the Honey-Flow 



BY CHAS. TROUT. 



It is an established fact that to pro- 

 duce the greatest amount of honey we 

 must control the tendency of the honey- 

 bee to swarm. Especially is this so with 

 the producer of comb honey. 



For several years I have tried numer- 

 ous methods and have arrived at the 

 following conclusions, namely that there 

 are tliree main reasons why bees swarm. 

 These are a desire for more room; 

 liereditary instinct ; poor ventilation and 

 communication of hives and supers. If 

 this tlieory is correct, then our problem 

 is to eliminate these faults. To do this 

 we must provide hives and bees which 

 are free of these conditions. 



The hive I use is a lo-frame one of 

 Langstroth dimensions. Ventilation is 

 supplied through the supers by a %- 

 incli hole bored in one end of each 

 super, and covered with wire netting 

 on the inside. The super is placed on 

 the hive so that the hole in the super 

 comes directly over the entrance. It 

 nuist never face the rear of the hive, as 

 that causes a draft over the brood. As 

 extracting supers have free communica- 

 tion we have only the comb honey super 

 to deal with. Comb honey supers which 

 have plain sections and fences already. 



