30 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEl'ER 



February 



Tbeir manner of attack upon the 

 bees is peculiar and most effective. 

 They first capture tlie guards and then, 

 entering the hive, bite a wing from any 

 bee that opposes them. The bees so 

 maimed seem to i-eaUze at once that 

 their days are numbered and crawl 

 from the hive to die. 



A friend has just reported to me 

 having Avitnessed the mating of num- 

 bers of queen ants and drones, which 

 while resembling in some respects the 

 connection of queen bees and drones, 

 differs very materially in others. Al- 

 though the drone ant survives several 

 ■meetings with queens, his end is only 

 for a little time delayed for he is not 

 allowed to return to the nest, the work- 

 ers driving him away whenever he at- 

 tempts to enter. 



Holly Hill, Fla., Aug. 5th, 1903. 



SHALLOW^ OR DEEP FRAMES. 



W. 



The Man and Management, Nat the Depth of Frame 

 Alone, Responsible for Results. 



By Arthur C. Miller. 



W. IMcNEAL seems to be of 

 the stuff from which eiythusi- 

 asts are made, and a^such 

 he is a welcome member of the guild 

 of beecrofters. His zeal in the advoca- 

 cy of deep combs has led him into 

 troubled waters. For evidence in su])- 

 port of his belief in such frames he has 

 accepted without questioning several 

 fallacies. Let us consider them. 



But first I Avould call attention to 

 possible differences in climate between 

 Wheelersburg, Ohio, and Providence, 

 R. I. Wheelersburg is over two de- 

 grees further south than Providence, 

 and the climate, as I chance to know, 

 less .severe than here, so what will suf- 

 fice the bees here should cerl:ainly do so 

 there. 



Mr. McNeal says "the little shallow 

 combs do not afford that protection 

 to the colony so essential to good win- 

 tering and early breeding." To which 

 I would say: It depends on the man 

 who handles them. Under right condi- 

 tions l)ees will winter in anything 

 which will keep rain and snow off of 

 them. I have wintered colonies in un- 

 protected, sii:gl(»-walled liives only 4" 

 3-4 inches deep; and I constantly win- 

 ter most of my bees in two chambers 

 of 5 1-2 inches depth each. He says: 

 "The shallow frames are designed ex- 



pressly to over-come the protective 

 habits of the bees in the storage of 

 honey." Certainly, to overcome that 

 habit diu'ing the honey flow for man's 

 especial benefit. And where he has 

 interfered for his own advantage and 

 deprived the bees of superior stores of 

 higli commercial value, he must in his 

 own interest use his intelligence in 

 supplying the bees with some less val- 

 uable food or permit them to retain 

 for their own use less desirable (to 

 him) honey gathered at some other 

 time. 



If we use the divisible brood cham- 

 ber hl\'e we must do so intelligently. 

 So used it becomes a valuable ally; 

 abused, it is a two-edged sword. 



Mr. ]McNc;!l bases his argument for 

 deep frames on the assertion that "the 

 depth of a wholly natural comb ex- 

 ceeds its width." It all depends on the 

 shape of the domicile Nature has sup- 

 plied. I have seen a single comb a 

 yard wide, and three to four inches 

 dee]). .lust one comb stretched out 

 in a long narrow cavity. Nature must 

 have played a scurvy trick on those 

 l)ees. 



"Bees build downwai'ds far more 

 readily than sidewise, etc.'' On the 

 contrary bees build sidewise twice as 

 fast as downwards and under some 

 conditions increase that ratio. True, a 

 small, spherical cluster of bees will 

 start one comb and build downwards 

 twice as fast as they build sidewise, 

 but multiply that cluster by foiu* and 

 string them along the top bar of a 

 frame, and we at once have four combs 

 building. When each coml> has gone 

 (h)wn two inches, each will have gone 

 sidewise one inch, and the aggregate 

 sidewise gi'owth is four inches, which 

 is twice the downward growth. The- 

 ory? Not a bit of it. Go to the bees 

 and study the ways of various sized 

 clusters in variously shaped domiciles. 

 Bees clustered in L frames start from 

 two to five combs and the.v meet and 

 extended along the whole 17 inches of 

 the to)) bar before they are within an 

 inch of the bottom bar at any point. 

 This is two inches of lateral growth 

 to one of vertii'al I'or one frame, but 

 the work is progressing simultaneous- 

 ly in ten frames and we have an ag- 

 gregate lateral growth of 170 inches to 

 S inches vertical, a ratio of 21 to 1. If 

 Mr. McNeal is going to depend on the 

 bees for his evidence I fear he will 



