May, 1909. 



American Vee Journal 



hives. Do you not think it is rather early 

 for so much honey? The prune blossoms are 

 just out this week, and where they get the 

 honey from is more than I can tell, with very 

 few wild flowers yet. Sage will not be in 

 bloom until May. At this rate they ought 

 to store a large amount of honey. Is there 

 any other way to control swarms besides cut- 

 ting out queen-cells? 



2. I have one colony that was hived late 

 last year. I looked at it today. I thought 

 it was queenless, as there were scarcely any 

 bees at work, but I found a large, black-look- 

 ing thing. After going all through I found her 

 on the ground and she could not fly; and 

 hardly walk. The colony has plenty of honey 

 and hardly any brood, so I got a frame of 

 good brood from another strong colony and put 

 it in place of some empty. What is the mat- 

 ter with this queen? \» by should she have 

 lots of feed and no brood to hatch more 

 young bees? What shall I do with her and 

 her friends ? California. 



Answers. — 1. If you are running for ex- 

 tracted honey, here is a plan that wita some 

 is quite successful in preventing swarming. 

 Just before there is danger of swarminc, put 

 the queen with frames of foundation or empty 

 combs in the lower story, and all the brood 

 in the second story, with an excluder be- 

 tween the 2 stories. No matter in which 

 story the bees are. If running for comb 

 honey, instead of putting the brood in the 

 second story, take it away entirely, giving 

 it to weak colonies or making a pile of it 

 to make a new colony. It may not be out 

 of place to say that you can not prevent 

 swarming by merely cutting out queen-cells. 



2. It may be the queen is old. Sometimes 

 there are poor queens which are not old, 

 and no one can tell just why they are poor. 

 Better kill the poor queen and give the colony 

 a better one. Likely, however, it will be bet- 

 ter to break the colony, distributing the combs 

 with adhering uees among other colonies. 



Redwood as Hive-Lumber. 



Will redwood, if used in making bee-hives, 

 cause the honey to partake of the flavor of 

 that wood, if a coating of linseed oil is used 

 on the insiae? That is the cheapest lumber 

 here. California. 



Answers. — I think redwood is used a good 

 deal for hives, and I never heard of its 

 harming the honey at all, I don't think you 

 need any inside coating. The bees can do 

 their own coating. 



Queen and Drone Excluding Bottom- 

 Slats. 



I am a beginner in bee-keeping, and my aim 

 is to produce comb honey. I would like to 

 know if it would not be a good idea to make 

 the bottom slats of the first supers on the 

 hive, queen and drone excluding. How far 

 apart should the bottom slats be in order 

 to be queen and drone excluding? By this 

 plan I would save the expense of buying 

 honey-boards. Minnesota. 



Answer. — Don't think for a minute of trying 

 such a plan. The space to exclude a queen 

 is about 1-6 of an inch; but it must be ex- 

 ceedingly exact. A very little more will let a 

 queen through, and a very little less will bar a 

 worker. Besides, with full sheets of worker- 

 foundation in your sections, the queen will 

 very seldom go up. I've produced tons of sec- 

 tion honey without using any excluders. 



An Octette of Questions. 



1. Did you ever try 2 queens in one hive? 



2. Why is the T-super better than others, 

 and why are they so short? 



3. Are the drones from one queen any better 

 than from another? 



4. How could I get the queen that X want, 

 to lay drone-eggs? If I give drone-comb they 

 rear workers just the same. 



5. Why is it that the more honey the bees 

 eat the warmer it gets? 



6. Do the bees ever kill the queen after 

 her wings are clipped? 



7. If the queen be clipped and they swarm 

 and the queen is lost, will they not swarm 

 again as often as they have nueen-cells left? 



8. Docs it pay to have full starters in su- 

 pers? Oregon. 



Answers. — 1. Yes; a good many times I've 

 had colonics with 2 queens, mother and daugh- 

 ter, and a few times I've put 2 queens, that 

 were not related in the same hive, but they were 



old <\UCf:n9. 



2. For several reasons; easier to fill, easier 

 to empty, easier to clean the sections, etc. 



It is shorter than other supers because simpler, 

 with no frames or holders to make it longer. 

 That gives it the advantage that when de- 

 sired a space for ventilation can be left at the 

 back end. 



3. bure; just as much difference in drones 

 as in queens. 



4. A little before harvest time, strengthen 

 the colony by giving it additional sealed brood 

 from other colonies, and if tnere is drone- 

 comb in the brood-nest she'll lay in it. 



5. For the same reason that the more fuel 

 you put in a stove the hotter the fire. Al- 

 though it is slower, the combustion of honey 

 in the bees is much the same as combustion 

 of fuel in the stove. 



6. In very rare cases. But they might kill 

 her just the same if you caught her and 

 put her back without clipping her. 



7. Ves, in about 8 days afterswarming will 

 begin, just as if the queen had not been 

 lost; only the colony being stronger the after- 

 swarming will be more certain. 



8. Ves; for many years I've used them along 

 with many others, and wouldn't think of doing 

 otherwise. 



Reversible Bottom - Board — Decoy 

 Hives. Etc. 



1. In July of the previous summer we se- 

 cured a swarm of bees in a barrel. In the au- 

 tumn a neighbor about half a mile from these 

 bees began to make cane syrup. I did not no- 

 tice that the bees came to bother at the syrup 

 cookery then. But, anyway, if I have one, 

 2 or more full colonies, is it probable that 

 the bees then will come and bother at the 

 syrup cookery? 



2. If one uses the reversible bottom-board, 

 one side making a narrow entrance, for win- 

 ter use, and the other side a wide entrance, 

 for summer use, how can there then in both 

 instances be a proper bee-space between bot- 

 tom-board and bottom-bars of the frames? 



3. How do the bees enter from the bot- 

 tom-board to the brood-frames? Do they only 

 craw], or do they both crawl and fly, as the 

 case may be? 



4. I believe somebody said that bees never 

 fly within a dark apartment. Is that so? 



5. Is it somewhat bad to reverse the posi- 

 tion of a brood-frame in the hive, so that the 

 end having been toward the front, thereafter 

 will be toward the rear? 



6. How would it be to use insect powder, 

 and a little "insect powder gun" for the sake 

 of keeping extracting-frames — either those full 

 of honey, or the empty combs — free from moth 

 and wax-worms? 



7. Regarding decoy hives, would they not be 

 much more inviting to the bees if there were 

 also foundation-starters, or one of the frames 

 having a full sheet of foundation. 



Wisconsin. 



Answers. — 1. les, there is danger. 



2. Usually it is the other way, the shallow 

 space being used in summer, and the deep 

 space in winter, a deeper space being desired 

 in winter than in summer. However, I use a 

 2-inch space summer and winter, in summer 

 putting in a bottom-rack to prevent building 

 down. 



3. They do both ways, if the space is deep 

 enough. 



4. I don't know; I don't believe they often 

 fly in the dark. 



5. It isn*t likely to make any difference. 



6. I doubt if it would work. 



7. Foundation would not be likely to prove 

 attractive to the bees, but the old combs 

 would. 



Increase Not Wanted — Frames and 



Splints — Italianizing Natural 



Swarms. 



1. I don't want to increase the number of 

 my colonies of bees any more than I will have 

 to by natural swarming, as I will not have 

 the time or money to take care of them. If 

 I get a new queen, could I not do some 

 requecning instead of working for increase? 



2. I had thought of working into your kind 

 of frames. Would not the metal-spaced frame 

 (Hoffman) with the bottom bar in 2 pieces 

 to receive the foundation, work nearly as well, 

 by using your splints? The bottom-bar of 

 the Hoffman frame I suppose would have to 

 be made heavier. 



3. I have finished reading your book. When 

 I came to Italianizing natural swarms I 

 thought that would be just the thing for a 

 farmer like myself, but, come to think of it, 

 our best colon ien do not always swarm first, 

 and sometimes not at all. H, C, or D might 

 be the first to swarm. In other words the 



bees might take a fool notion not to carry 

 out their part of the program. I suppose A 

 might be stimulated enough to make every- 

 thing work out nearly, if not quite, up to the 

 program. Ohio. 



Answers. — 1. Certainly. You can introduce 

 a queen of the new stock into any one of your 

 colonies. Also, when a colony swarms, any 

 time within a week you can destroy all the 

 queen-cells in the mother colony and give it 

 a queen-cell of the new stock. 



2. You can use foundation-splints in any 

 kind of a frame. Neither is it necessary to 

 have the bottom-bar in 3 pieces, nor to have 

 it heavy. If the bottom-bar is in one piece, 

 let the foundation come down to it, being cut 

 true so as to make a close fit, and then run 

 melted wax along the edge of the foundation 

 so as to fasten it to the center of the bottom- 

 bar. 



3. Now look here, you're not going to let 

 the bees beat you in a little thing like that, 

 are you ? Suppose you have a colony with 

 your best queen, and it is the weakest one 

 in the yard, and yet you want it to swarm 

 first. Don't go to stimulating. Just give it 

 a frame of well sealed brood perhaps 2 weeks 

 or longer before there's any danger of any 

 colony swarming. In a day or two you can 

 give it another frame or two, and again after 

 another interval, and keep on until it is the 

 strongest colony you have. Take the brood 

 from the strongest colonies, and that will 

 stop them from swarming, while it will turn 

 your best colony toward swarming. You can 

 also help matters after you have the hive 

 full of brood, by taking away combs that 

 are not well filled with brood, or that have 

 young brood unsealed, and swapping them for 

 combs that have mostly sealed brood. Thus 

 weakening your strongest of the other colonies, 

 and strengthening this one colony, why should 

 it not swarm first ? Then as often as it 

 swarmed, you could each time set it in place 

 of a strong colony, thus strengthening it to 

 swarm again, and each time it swarmed setting 

 it again in place of another colony, thus 

 keeping it strong for swarming so long as 

 its queen-cells last. 



Why So Small a Swarm? 



1. I got a queen July 18, 1908. I gave 

 her to a weak colony and on August 30 I 

 changed her to a stronger colony. This last 

 colony showed quite a few yellow bees last 

 fall. I have been watching them pretty closely 

 to see the black bees disappear, but to my 

 surprise the yellow bees began to disappear. 

 I opened the hive yesterday and found the 

 frames full of brood, but all black bees. What 

 became of the yellow queen? 



2. Why were the bees so black? They don't 

 look like hybrids. 



3. After I looked in the hive yesterday 

 (April 25), say 10 a. m., a small swarm came 

 out. Maybe there was a pint of them. They 

 flew in the air pretty badly scattered. I fol- 

 lowed them. They went to a neighbor's about 

 a quarter of a mile away, who had bees, and 

 they mixed with his bees. I suppose they 

 killed them. They were in front of one of 

 his hives fighting, and some were in the air. 

 What caused them to cast such a small swarm? 



Kansas. 



Answers — 1. You don't say whether you 

 gave the queen without any bees to the strong- 

 er colony, or united the weak colony, queen 

 and all, with the stronger. I suspect the 

 latter, and that there never were any yellow 

 bees in the stronger colony except those you 

 gave with the queen; and the queen was killed 

 as soon as given. 



2. The probability is that there was a black 

 queen in the hive at the time you gave the 

 yellow queen, or else the bees reared a young 

 black queen, whose workers would be black and 

 not hybrid. 



3. You don't say what was left in the hive, 

 whether all the bees went or not. If all or 

 most of the bees went, it was a case of discour- 

 aged bees deserting their hive, not an unusual 

 thing in spring. 



Queen-Rearing — Reversible Bottom- 

 Boards. 



1. If I put an empty hive-body under a 

 colony of bees to give them plenty of room, 

 and then when I want to, reduce to one hive, 

 if I should put one hive-body on a new stand, 

 would the colony without a queen rear one for 

 itself? If I understand it right, bees can 

 rear a queen if they have all stages of brood 

 to choose from. 



2. I have bottom-boards that can be put 

 upside down and there will be a larger en- 



