THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



173 



" laying queen balled" I cage her 

 till the bees give up their evil in- 

 tentions on her life. By these 

 proceedings I have found to n\y 

 satisfaction that the fault of "ball- 

 ing" is most generally "pure curs- 

 edness" on the part of the worker 

 bees. 



By close observation in con- 

 nection with this curious and seri- 

 ous freak of bees destroying their 

 queens in the early spring, I find 

 the main cause to be discourage- 

 iTient. I rarely ever see it occur if 

 the colonies are fairl}' populous and 

 have plenty of stores, hence the 

 remedy is to provide the bees with 

 an abundance of stores if you must 

 keep less of them. 



I have found that the advice of 

 the standard books on bee culture 

 are misleading when they advise 

 building up weak colonies by 

 drawing brood from the stronger 

 ones. It pays me best to depend 

 on the strong colonies for surplus, 

 and leave the weak colonies to 

 build up .themselves if they get no 

 surplus at all. 



AVell, what I wanted to say 

 most in this connection is, after 

 one has learned the internal work- 

 ing of the bee hive and gained 

 sufficient knowledge of external 

 appearances, it is a waste of time 

 and labor to open hives often. 

 The hives should be so ari'anged 

 as to be susceptible of manipula- 

 tion without going into the 

 brood department except when ab- 

 solutely necessary. In an apiary 

 located in a public place like my 

 own, where many persons visit it 

 as sight-seers, it pays me to keep 

 a hive or two, in proper condition 

 for rapid and easy manipulation, 

 that the queen can be exhibited 

 readily, the brood and drones, woi'k- 

 ers pointed out, etc. One or two 

 hives can be made to pa}- in this 

 way in a large apiary, 1 use them 

 to draw brood from, using the 

 purest stock in the apiary for the 



purpose, as we like to "show" ou^' 

 best stock, and such bees make the 

 best of nuclei and work well any- 

 where. 



The swarming season is late here 

 this spring ; I had but one sw^arm 

 in May. The weather has been 

 too fitful for swarming up to this 

 date (June 4). I have found a 

 shorter way to prevent after 

 swarms than the plans I have here- 

 tofore practised. Instead of de- 

 laying as heretofore, I now succeed 

 by moving the hive from which the 

 swarm issues immediately to anew 

 location, and this saves time and 

 "fuss." When a swarm issues, an 

 empty hive is set by the side of 

 the " old hive," and the combs are 

 all lifted out and the few bees that 

 are left are shaken off into the 

 " old hive" and are placed in the 

 new hive. If I have young queens 

 one is run into the new hive, after 

 destroying all queen cells ; if not, 

 one good cell is left and the bal- 

 ance destroyed. The now empty 

 "old hive" is filled with empty 

 combs or frames filled with foun- 

 dation. A queen excluder is put 

 on, and on this is placed plenty of 

 surplus room including the case or 

 cases that were on the hive when 

 the swarm issued. The new hive, 

 with its contents, is novv moved to 

 a new location in the apiary, and 

 the swarm is hived in the " old 

 hive" on the 'old stand. Not one 

 time in a dozen will a second 

 swarm issue under this manage- 

 ment, and' " never a one" if a 

 young queen is given immediatel}^ 



Hiving swarms in hives that 

 have just cast prime swarms, as 

 suggested by brother Alley, " is 

 not new." Several persons have 

 spoken of the plan heretofore, and 

 I have tried it without satisfactory 

 result. In our great swarming 

 season (1883) I tried it on a large 

 scale, and it did not work satisfac- 

 torily. It seems to place the bees 

 in too much the same conditions 



