1898. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAlu. 



391 



managemeDt of bees. I am m the Michigan peach belt, and 

 kave 1,000 trees on my place, besides 800 apple trees. I am 

 one mile from Lake Michigan. We grow crimson, Alsike and 

 white clovers. My bees have free access to plenty of bass- 

 wood, alfalfa, sand vetch, etc., with acres of buckwheat in the 



fall. 



Michigan. 



Answers. — 1. If the season should be extra good, you 

 might close with 9 strong colonies, providing you made no bad 

 moves ; and if the season should be extra poor, you might not 

 have more than three. 



2. Pages of the text-books are written about the matter 

 of increasing, and it would hardly be possible to reproduce It 

 all In this department. Indeed, it is quite possible that you 

 can do no better than to let the bees swarm naturally. You 

 are mistaken in supposing that tiering up supers will prevent 

 swarming. Unless you have very large hives you may tier 

 up supers all you like and you'll have plenty of swarms. 



The plan you mention would do, but it is hardly the best, 

 for a weak nucleus will not rear as good a queen as a strong 

 colony. At least during the time a young queen is fed in 

 the larva state she should be in a strong colony. When you 

 put the 3-frame nucleus in a new place, all the old bees will 

 leave it and go back to the old stand, making the nucleus 

 weak in bees, with no honey coming in for a few days, and in 

 such a discouraged condition they will not rear the best 

 queens. Just change your plan a little. Take the two frames 

 with the queeu and put them in a new hive on a new stand. 

 Eight or nine days later put the old hive with the six frames 

 on an entirely new stand. Then put the hive with the old 

 queen back on the old place. Put an empty hive on the 

 stand where the queen has been for the past eight days, and 

 put in this empty hive three frames from the hive that has 

 the six frames. Of course, you will fill up with frames of 

 foundation. In this way your young queens will be fed in a 

 strong colony. 



3. Operate as soon as the harvest fairly commences. By 

 waiting till this time part of your bees may swarm naturally, 

 saving you the trouble of dividing. 



4. The usual rule is to put on supers as soon as the bees 

 put bits of white wax along the upper parts of the combs. If 

 you divide in the way mentioned, put supers on the hives that 

 have the old queens, at the time of making the last change. 



Put in a good deal of time In studying faithfully your 

 text-books. To be successful you should be familiar with the 

 whole ground, and sometimes failures may come from the 

 fact that you are not familiar with some principle that you 

 may have thought had no practical bearing. 



Be a little slow about giving up the farm till you know 

 you can make a go with bees. 



A Supposed Queeiile§8 Colony Swarming^. 



Do queenless colonies cast swarms ? The following will 

 be of some interest to the readers of the American Bee Jour- 

 nal no doubt : 



On May 22 1 had a colony cast a swarm at 1:30 p.m. 1 

 was at dinner at the time, and was startled to hear some one 

 call out that the bees were swarming. This being a little un- 

 expected, I had to get everything in readiness to take the 

 cluster, hive them, etc., but to my surprise they never clus- 

 tered, but went straight back to the hive, not having been out 

 five minutes. Well, they simply covered that hive, and grad- 

 ually went in. To make a long story short, I examined the 

 hive carefully for a queen aod for eggs and larvte. There 

 were a great many sealed brood-cells, and quite a number that 

 had just been vacated by the young, and which the bees had 

 begun to store honey in ; some had been almost filled, but 

 there was not a sign of an egg or small grub to be seen. 



Now, Doctor, this is the point: If there was a queen in 

 that colony at the time of examination, she would have laid 

 eggs in the cells that the young bees had left, would she not ? 

 I must mention here that they had three capt queen-cells but 

 no queen, and no sign of recently having one. 



On Wednesday, May 25, this colony cast a swarm again, 

 and returned for the second time. On examination I found 

 that the three queen-cells were still closed — no sign of 

 egg or larva except remaining capt brood. On Saturday, May 

 28, they swarmed for the third and last time up to dale, and 

 returned as before. On examination I find as before, except 

 most of the brood hatcht, and a few large grubs here and 

 there ready to be sealed. This colony is a very strong one 

 (Italians), in an 8-frame Langstroth hive, with lots of" honey. 

 They came out of the cellar, having wintered well, in a strong 

 and vigorous condition, April 8, and set to cleaning house and 

 to work immediately. 



Now the question is this : Will a colony swarm that has 



no queen ? From my experience with this, I am of the opin- 

 ion that they will, the bees being so numerous and crowded in 

 a hive that most of them have no chance to ascertain whether 

 they have a queen or not, as she may have been about only a 

 week or ten days, and being in a swarmlng-fever, light out, 

 expecting their queen to accompany them, and discovering 

 her failure to do so (which would be impossible under the cir- 

 cumstances), return to the hive. 



What is the best thing for me to do with them ? 



Toronto. 



Answer. — It is hardly necessary to assume that bees with 

 no queen will swarm, in order to account for the circumstance 

 you relate. There may have been no laying queen in the hive 

 for a number of days, but a young queen with defective wings 

 may have been present. If so, the bees would act just as 

 yours did. 



Very likely there is nothing to do in the case, for by this 

 time another queen has probably issued from one of the queen- 

 cells and has commenced laying. If, however, you fail to find 

 eggs in 10 or 12 days after the young queen has emerged, it 

 may be necessary to give them a queen, a queen-cell, or a frame 

 of young brood and eggs from which they can rear a queen. 



You hardly give the bees the credit they deserve for find- 

 ing out the absence of a queen. No matter how many bees 

 are in the hive, when one bee finds out no queen is present, it 

 doesn't take 10 minutes for the news logo through the whole 

 hive, making a general uproar, and you may count on the 

 matter being fully known long before the expiration of 10 

 days, or even two. 



Is Bee Diarrhea or Dysentery a Disease? — Los- 

 ing; Queens. 



In reply to P. A. Newcomer's request, on page 355, It is 

 perhaps not entirely clear whether diarrhea, or dysentery, as 

 he calls it, should be called a disease or not. It is an over- 

 loaded condition of the Intestines, a flight giving relief. The 

 confinement long-continued gives occasion for the accumula- 

 tion of feces, and cold aggravates the matter, for the colder 

 It is the more food will be eaten, causing more rapid accumu- 

 lation. The character of the food makes a great difference, 

 but those who say that food alone makes the trouble are 

 clearly in error, unless the food be actual poison, for in cases 

 where the food is bad and the bees suffer from diarrhea there 

 would be no trouble if the weather was warm, or if the bees 

 could have daily flights. 



Your trouble in losing queens would probably be greatly 

 lessened, Mr. Newcomer, if you would make just a little 

 change in the placing of your hives. If I understand you cor- 

 rectly, your hives stand in rows with a space of 18 inches be- 

 tween each two hives. Instead of that, move No. 2 to within 

 two inches of No. 1, No. 4 to within two Inches of No. 3, and 

 so on, moving each even number, and letting the odd numbers 

 stand just where they are. That will make them in pairs, 

 the two hives in each pair being two inches apart, and there 

 being a space of 34 inches between the pairs. It will take no 

 more room, but will practically make the hives twice as far 

 apart, so far as relates to the queens finding their own hives. 



C. C. Miller. 

 ^ m 



Question About T Supers. 



I have a T super with T tins nailed fast. The super is 

 made of ^u-inch sides and % ends. I never saw any of them 

 used, but I think they are good, if one knows how. Will I 

 have to use followers and wedges, or how will I manage it? 

 As you use the T super, you can tell me how I can use mine 

 for different widths of sections. Wisconsin. 



Answer. — It depends upon the width of the sections. 

 Some sections will fit in the super all right without any fol- 

 lower and wedge, altho harder to get out. But if the sections 

 and separators do not exactly fill the super, a follower must 

 be used, that is, a board of proper size to shove up against 

 the sections at one side, whatever space the follower does not 

 occupy being taken up by a wedge, the wedge being not really 

 in wedge form, but simply a plain stick to crowd in between 

 the sections and the side of the super. 



The McEvoy Koul Brood Xreatmeut is 



given in Dr. Howard's pamphlet on " Foul Brood ; Its Natural 

 History and Rational Treatment." It is the latest publication 

 on the subject, and should be in the hands of every bee-keeper. 

 Price, 25 cents ; or clubbed with the Bee Journal for one year 

 —both for $1.10. 



