August. 1909. 



American Hee Journal 



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■-.'. \\ lil I hey usually tight when exchanged? 



3. We have some honey coming in almost 

 every day in the year. How long ought it to 

 take a colony that has swarmed — treated as 

 usual to prevent afterswarms — to build up 

 again ? 



4. How many days after the swarm issues 

 before the parent colony will have a laying 

 queen ? 



5. \VouId you requeen during tlie honey-flow? 



6. Do you lose much by changing queens? 



7. How would it do to make a nucleus for 

 each colony, rearing queens from the best 

 queen, and when the queen is laying unite to 

 the colony intended to requeen? How would 

 I best do it? Louisiana. 



Answers. — 1. As your experience goes to 

 show, it is sometimes a good thing and some- 

 times not. In the first case the strong colony 

 likely had a poor queen, and when given the 

 weak colony with a young queen things looked 

 different, and the fielders went to work with a 

 will. 



2. Generally there is no fighting if honey is 

 yielding. Worse than fightine is the danger 

 sometimes of a queen being killed. Generally, 

 except in a case like the first mentioned, it is 

 not advisable to strengthen a colony by making 

 it exchange places with another. 



3. Six weeks or less. 



4. Not far from 3 weeks. 



.^. Ves, if enough is to be gained by it. 



0. There is likely to be a little break in the 

 laying. 



7. It may work very well. The easiest way 

 is to exchange two frames of the colony for 

 two frames of the nucleus with queen and ad- 

 hering bees, doing this during a honey-flow 2 

 or 3 days after unqueening the old colony. 



iiig. 1 wish it would. Still, along with other 

 things it helps a little toward it. 



6. Better do the first way mentioned. 



7. From the office of the American Bee 

 Journal you can "et Dr. Howard's "Foul 

 Brood," pamp.itet describing the McE^voy treat- 

 ment; also Kohnke's "Foul Brood" pamphlet. 

 The former for 20 cents, or the latter for 10 

 cents. Both together for 25 cents. 



Moving Bees 100 Yards — Afterswarms 



— Increase — Preparing Bees for 



•Winter — Foul Brood BuHetin. 



1. Between now and March. I'Jlu. I have to 

 move my bees about lou yards from where 

 they now are. When can 1 move them so as 

 to have no bees go back to the old place? 



2. In preventing afterswarms, by placing the 

 young swarm on the old stand and taking the 

 old colony to a new place, should all quecn- 

 cclls e.xcept the ripest one be cut out at once? 



3. W'here there are several queen-cells in a 

 hive all sealed up, now can I tell the ripest 

 one ? 



4. I have 25 colonies of bees and want to 

 increase to 50 next year and secure as much 

 surplus honey as possible. How would you do 

 this? We have plenty of white clover that be- 

 gins blooming May 1, and blooms 2 months. 



5. As I said before, I want one swarm from 

 each colony. Now if I should give one super 

 to each colony as soon as white clover begins 

 blooming, and add empty supers by placing 

 them under the one about two-thirds full, and 

 keep adding supers as needed, will they swarm 

 regardless of this room? Or will I have to 

 eive one or two supers and not add any more 

 supers until they swarm? How would you 

 manage this? 



<5. In preparing my bees for winter I am 

 poiP'' to put the super cover on the honey- 

 board over all brood-chambers. Will it be all 

 right then to set an empty super over ihis 

 coTcr. and put chaff in it, or should the hive 

 cover be placed over this super and the super 

 left off- 



7. Where can I obtain a bulletin on foul 

 brood, and what will be the cost of same? 



Kentl'ckv. 



Answers. — 1. Move them any time in winter 

 or early spring at a time when they have had 

 the longest confinement in the hives. Of course 

 you will ha\'e to make a guess at that, and per- 

 haps it will be. in your locality, soon after 

 the middle of the winter. 



2. That's one way. l here's a better way. 

 Set the swarm on the old stand, the old hive 

 close beside it, without cutting out any queen- 

 cells, and let stand for a week. Then move 

 the old hive to a new stand, and the bees will 

 do the rest. i ou sec when the old hive is 

 moved at that time an the field-bees will leave 

 it and join the swarm. That will weaken the 

 old colony, ana added to that is the fact that 

 no honey will be coming in, so the bees will 

 conclude they can not afford to swarm, and all 

 the extra qucen-cclls will be killed without your 

 opcninc the hive. 



3. You can't. You can make a guess at it 

 by noting which seems to have the deepest pits 

 on its surface. 



4. There is perhaps no better way than to 

 let each colony swarm once, treating it as dc- 

 <(cribed in answer No. 2. That will give a 

 strnnT force to the swarm, which will do the 

 principal storing, although the mother colony 

 may Mttrn some if there is a late flow. 



.1. .VJding supers will not stop their swarm- 



' A Beginner's Questions. 



1. How long will it take bees to rear a queen 

 from brood? 



2. Why does a new swarm refuse to stay in 

 a hive after they have been in one night? I 

 nad 3 swarms leave their hives so far this 

 spring. I stopped 2 and put them in other 

 hives and they stayed. The hives where they 

 were hived first had full sheets of foundation, 

 and lots of room. Why didn't they stay? 



3. Would they try to leave if the queen's 

 wings were clipped ? 



4. What is the best thinif to do to stop a 

 swarm that wants to leave? 



5. is a queen on the outside or inside of a 

 swarm which is clustered on a Hmb ? 



6. Does an old colony cast more than one 

 swarm in an ordinary season if they have 

 plenty of room to work in? 



7. Is the sumac good for the bees to work 

 on? 



S. H I do not cut the queen-cells out, will 

 aflerswarming go on, and must every queen- 

 cell be cut out to prevent it? 



0. When a swarm issues from a hive, does 

 the nueen go out first ^ 



10. How can vou tell when a queen is bailed, 

 and what should be done to her if balled? 



11. Can you give me a good plan to melt wax 

 on a stove or without a wax-extractor? 



12. How long does basswood bloom last, and 

 what time does it generally begin in Northern 

 Jowa ^ 



13. What time does the white clover bloom? 



Iowa. 

 Answers. — 1. If you give young brood to a 

 quecnless colony, you may expect a virgin 

 queen to emerge in about 12 days; sometimes 

 a day sooner, sometimes a day or more later. 



2. Oftener than for any other reason, swarms 

 desert because tlie hive is too close and hot. 

 They might have stayed just the same if they 

 had b^en put oack . in the same hive instead 

 of a different hive. 



3. Clipping the queen would make no differ- 

 ence. 



4. Shade the hive, give abundance of ventila- 

 tion, sprinkle the hive with water, and give 

 the swarm a comb of brood. 



5. She may be anywhere in the cluster, and 

 sometim-.s the bees will cluster and the queen 

 not with them at all. 



6. Oftener than not, if left to itself, a col- 

 ony will send out a second swarm about 8 days 

 later than the prime swarm. 



7. In some regions it is an important honey- 

 plant. 



ft. If cells are left, the bees may swarm again, 

 and they may not. If all but one be cut out, 

 there will be no more swarming. » 



9. No- she may be among the last. 



10. You can tell by seeing a bunch of bees 

 r^rhans as large as a hickorynut holding tight 

 together. Throw the ball in a dish of water 

 and the bees will leave her. Or, you may 

 smoke the ball; but hold the smoker at a dis- 

 tance, for if hot smoke is thrown on the ball 

 the bees will sting her. 



11. Tear open one corner of a dripping-pan. 

 Put in the pan the stuff to be melted, put the 

 nan in the oven of the conk-stove, the inside 

 corner the highest, and the open corner pro- 

 i'^ctini; outside (oi course the oven-door is left 

 nnpn> sn that the melted wax as it drops may 

 be cavight in a disli set to receive it. 



12. It probably begins in Northern Iowa not 

 fT from the same time as here, somewhere in 

 the first part of July, and lasts 10 days or so. 



13. Somewhere in the first part of Tune, and 

 may last 2 weeks or 2 months. 



Some New Bee-Puzzles for Him. 



1. .\'>out May 2*1. I transferred several col- 

 onies from hox-hivLS to movable-frame. One, 

 after remaining 4 or 5 days and sticking the 

 combs in nicely, swarmed out, leaving their own 

 brood in all stages. 



2. Tune 10. I found queen-cells just started. 

 Destroyed them, and 9 days later, after again 

 destroying all fiucen-cell^, T put the rjuecn on 

 frames with 2-inch starters belnw zinc. Two 

 of the 8 colonies so treated swarmed before I 

 visited them again 5 days later. The 2 which 

 swarmed are on standard Hoffman frames. All 

 the others on ainch frames. 



3. Tune 23. I destroyed the first queen-cells 

 found in the colony, took away all unsealed 



brood, giving fraiies of foundation. They were 

 strong. They diew out the foundation beauti- 

 * fully and brought in about 10 pounds of honey, 

 and swarmed out leaving a couple frames of 

 compact, unsealed brood and less than a pint 

 of bees — not a queen-cell — before I returned to 

 tiiera 4 or 5 days later. 



4. Last Saturday (July 10), fearing lest a 

 strong colony would swarm, I placed a zinc 

 above an ordinary super, and set it under the 

 Iiive — on the bottom-board, of course. I had 

 no trap handy, and thought this would hold 

 the queen till today — Monday. They have 

 swarmed and are now queenless. W here did 

 that queen go ? "i don't know," and hardly 

 expect any man to make an intelligent guess, 

 but she is certainly gone. 



I have handled bees only 5 or 6 seasons, 

 and these are new puzzles to me. With the 

 exception of a few well-behaved queens I re- 

 cently bought in Ohio, I have only common 

 blacks with a little yellow in their disposition. 



If you can offer any hint as to where I 

 "fizzled," I will be grateful. Iowa. 



Answers. — 1. If conditions were as they 

 were here, it would be entirely natural for them 

 to swarm out from hunger, unless you had 

 taken care to see that they were not out c f 

 provisions. In other words, it was a hunger- 

 swarm. If they had plenty of honey and pol- 

 len, then I don't know where the "fizzle" was. 



2. That's hardly out of the regular to have 

 such exceptions. Hard to understand all about 

 it, but one thing is that when bees get into a 

 swarming fever, tlie longer time they are hind- 

 ered, the more determined they seem to swarm. 

 If you had treated them at first destroying of 

 cells, instead of waiting another 9 days, there 

 might have been no swarming. Sometimes the 

 queen seems balky, just keeps on the bottom 

 of the excluder trying to get up to the brood, 

 and then the bees swarm. There might be 

 some gain in putting in the lower story one of 

 the poorest frames of brood. 



3. Once a young fellow upon his examination 

 was asked, '■Where is Boston located?" "Bos- 

 ton — why. Host on — well, now, I know just as 

 well as can be where Boston is located out T 

 haven't the flow of language to express it." I 

 know all about why those bees swarmed out. 

 but I haven't the flow of language to express 

 it! 



4. Now look here, you keep asking questions 

 that are harder and harder, and I'm not Poing 

 to answer any more unless you ask somethine 

 easier. Hut sav. are you sure that queen did 

 ""To" at all? "You looked carefullv and know 

 she is not in the ii»Ve?" A fiuecn in swarming 

 trim is a treat dodger, and you could easily 

 miss her. Where and how she hides sometimes 

 is a mystery to me. There is just a possibility 

 that she went through some crack, or even 

 through the excluder. A queen, in her frantic 

 efforts to swarm, will sometimes co through an 

 excluder that she would never think of going 

 Ihrongli to go up into a super, 



Bee-Keeping in Georgia. 



From all indications now, it seems that we 

 are to have a very short honey crop in Georgia. 

 I can not see any good reason for this. The 

 winter was very mild, having only 2 or 3 small 

 freezes. 



I made what 1 call a reducer. That is, I cut 

 out a hole in a board, one inch smaller than 

 the inside measurement of a box-hive. I placed 

 the board on one of my 8-frame hives (which 

 contained one-inch starters) and set a box-hive 

 on top of the board. These bees were about to 

 swarm when I set them on the new hive. The 

 result was that they never swarmed, but filled 

 the 8 frames with comb and some lioney. I 

 got 20 pounds of honey from the top of the 

 box-hive. 



1. I intend to co there - next spring near 

 swarming time, remove tlie box-hive, and set 

 it down close beside the 8-frame hive for a 

 week. I will look for the queen in the new 

 hive. If she is not present in the liive. I will 

 know she is in the box-hive, and if I find nueen- 

 cells with eggs in them, I will let it go at that, 

 and put on a super at once, but if I find no 

 (iuccn or eggs, then I will take from some other 

 liive a frame that does have nuecn -cells with 

 epcs, and give to them. What do you think of 

 the plan? 



2. I have 7 8-frame hives. The bees came out 

 of box-hives and instead of letting them sit be- 

 side the box-hive for a week, I put them on a 

 new stand as soon as hived, *»iving them a super 

 with starters. The result is that I am going 

 to get no surplus honcv from them this year 

 at all, but they have built some combs in the 

 supers. You don't think I could expect to ret 

 any surplus from them the first year, managed 

 that way. do you? 



3. Tell me the easiest way for a beginner to 

 make increase from 7 colonics to 21 or more. 



