1898. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



663 



B Is an up-to-date beekeeper. A furnishes 10 colonies of 

 bees. If there is no swarming, and A gets one-third of the 

 pay for the honey, he ought to be satisfied. Perhaps one- 

 fourth would be enough, for he still has the 10 colonies left, 

 and all that he needs pay for Is the Interest on the money in- 

 vested in the bees and the wear and tear of the hives and con- 

 tents. If there are swarms, he should have a share of them, 

 or Its equivalent iu the honey. But It's all as you make the 

 bargain, and everything should be put down In black and 

 white, so there can be no possible misunderstanding, for the 

 chances are that If you go into the share business and are the 

 best friends in the world, you may not be on speaking terms 

 when the dicker is over. You can settle up and begin over 

 again every year, or you can make an arrangement for a given 

 number of years. 



2. The dummies are practically wooden combs with holes 

 bored for cells, only there are no bottoms to the cells, the 

 holes being bored clear through the wood. The Idea seems to 

 be that the bees think they have a lot of empty combs, but as 

 there are no cell bottoms they can't fill them, and so long as 

 they find lots of empty cells they hardly think It necessary 

 to swarm. 



. — ^ I ^ 



How and When lo Transfer. 



What Is the best plan, and when, to change a colony of 

 bees from a box-hive into a Langstroth hive ? I placed the 

 Langstroth hive on top of the box-hive the past summer, and 

 as there is about 40 pounds of honey in it, I thought I would 

 move them Into It this fall. Illinois. 



Answer. — With 40 pounds of honey in the Langstroth 

 hive, there ought to be little trouble. You can drum all the 

 bees out of the box-hive, letting them run into the frame hive, 

 then set the hives back as they were, putting a queen-excluder 

 between, so that the queen will be fastened in the upper or 

 frame hive. Possibly, however, the queen is already In the 

 upper hive, in which case there will be no need of drumming. 

 Perhaps you will do well to attend to it right away, altho it 

 could be left till spring. 



Finding the Queen in a Large Colony. 



I have great difficulty in finding the queen in a moder- 

 ately large colony, or In telling with certainty when a colony 

 is queeuless. Is there no invention that would aid us in catch- 

 ing the queen when it is desired to do so ? If so, what is it, 

 and where can I buy it ? Is the Hannemann beesieve used 

 for this purpose ? Texas. 



Answers. — Finding a queen readily Is largely a matter of 

 practice. In back numbers of the present volume of this jour- 

 nal you will find some hints that will be useful, and as you 

 will probably not want to do a great deal more in the way of 

 finding queens till next spring, it will be a good plan to load 

 up with information through the winter. Often a second 

 reading at one's leisure will be of more benefit than the first 

 reading, which is perhaps somewhat hurried. 



But you can generally tell whether a colony Is queenless 

 without seeing the queen. Indeed, it is more satisfactory to 

 see the brood than to see the queen. For you may find a 

 beautiful queen present and yet the colony may be worse off 

 than if they had no queen at all. For the finest looking queen 

 in the world may be a drone-layer, and the colony is better off 

 after you've killed her. So whether you see the queen or not, 

 look at the brood. If eggs are present, brood in all stages, 

 and the brood sealed in worker-cells has a flat surface and 

 doesn't look like a lot of little marbles laid together, you may 

 know that they have a queen that Is all right. 



Yes, you can have something to help catch the queen, and 

 It's probably what you mean by a " Hannemann sieve." Plan 

 any way you like to have the bees pass through queen-exclud- 

 ing perforated zinc, and the workers will pass and the queen 

 be left. You may arrange this at the entrance, or otherwise. 

 One way is this: Fasten on the bottom of a hive-body a 

 queen-excluder, and call it your " sieve." Lift the hive from 

 its stand and set an empty hive In Its place. Takeout a frame 

 of brood, brush all the bees from It In the old hive with the 

 rest of the bees, and then put this frame of brood lu the empty 

 hive on the stand. Set your sieve on top of this hive on the 

 stand. Now brush oft each comb, one after another, brush- 

 ing the bees into the sieve. As fast as you brush off a comb, 

 put it into another hive, for if you put it back where the bees 

 are, the queen may crawl upon it and your work will be to do 

 over again. Sometimes the bees will all run promptly down, 

 leaving the queen alone iu the sieve, and sometimes you will 

 need to use a little smoke to drive them down. 



Heather Swarms are cheap in Germany. C. Burgdorff 

 advertises them in Gravenhorst's Bztg. at 63 cents to $1.00 

 each, and laying queens at 38 cents each. 



Facing Honey-Cases is discust by Somnambulist in the 

 Progressive Bee-Keeper, who mentions two cents a pound dif- 

 ference in honey caused by the manner of packing, as also 15 

 to 20 cents a basket on peaches. He doesn't leave it entirely 

 clear whether the goods with the better facing got the higher 

 price or not, but closes by saying that " honest facing is not 

 an impossibility." 



The "Changing" Cure for Bee-Paralysis. — A colony of 

 bees had paralysis so badly, says W. A. Pryal, in Gleanings, 

 that the bees were dwindling rapidly, hundreds crawling from 

 the hive each morning, and a quart of dead bees being some- 

 times in front of the hive. He made the diseased colony ex- 

 change places with a healthy one, and the effect was magical ; 

 no more dead bees in front of either hive. 



Bee-Space Between Combs.— The question has been 

 somewhat discust as to whether M or 3/16 was the space 

 left by the bees between two combs of honey sealed over. 

 Some testimony seemed to show that blacks left a smaller 

 space than Italians. T. H. Kloer says in Gleanings that his 

 Italians average 3/16, and he thinks that where they leave 

 a space of M that the bees had too much room, or else the 

 honey-flow was too scant. The editor now calls for more re- 

 ports, for the thickness of the cleats of fences depends on the 

 space that the bees favor. 



The Honey Crop. — Taking the whole world at large on 

 both sides the ocean, 1898 will be remembered as a year of 

 failure for beekeepers. The Canadian Bee Journal reports 

 Canada as an exception. " In a few localities of limited areas 

 it has been light ; in others a good crop, and in a very large 

 portion of the honey-producing districts the crop has been 

 very heavy." But the journal complains that honey has been 

 rusht on the market at too low prices, stores having filled up 

 at as low as 5 and 5M cents for first-class extracted, and 

 4iix4>!£ sections being sold as low as 73-2 cents a section. 



"Grading Honey; Doolittle's position again defined; 

 does not recommend or practice facing." Such is the head- 

 ing of an article in Gleanings by G. M. Doolittle. He says no 

 one can carry " In his eye" the difference between fancy and 

 No. 1 ten rods. More than that, if one side of a case is faced 

 with No. 1, and the other side with fancy, he can hardly tell 

 the difference, but if the two kinds are placed side by side the 

 difference is easily told. He disapproves of putting No. 1 and 

 fancy in same case, and even of sending to same place. He 

 ships fancy to one man and No. 1 to another, and thus gets 

 as much for No. 1 as for fancy. He thinks Messrs. York, 

 Hasty and Miller have been attributing to him something he 

 neither did nor even recommended, saying : " Just what I do 

 do, and just what I recommend, is an honest sorting of honey 

 by the X plan as given above, then pick the ' prettiest faces ' 

 out of each lot and place them on the outside." 



The Bight Hive is discust in the Progressive Bee-Keeper 

 by Messrs. Aikin and Doolittle. Both agree that movable 

 frames are of no use to the bees, and of no use to the bee- 

 keeper who never lifts them out of the hive. Aikin thinks 

 the best size and shape to suit the bees is 16x16x24 inches, 

 24 being the height, altho a little variation from this might 

 be made to suit the bee-keeper ; he hints that 15x17 might be 

 a good size, but wants the height greater than the length, and 

 the brood-chamber in sections five or six inches deep. The 

 16x16x24 size calls from Doolittle the exclamation, "Shades 

 of Huber I whither are we drifting ?" He figures the contents 

 of such a hive at (),144, when Quinby gave 2,000 to 2,500, 

 and prophecies that no comb honey would ever be taken with 

 the large size. The suggestion of hive-sections five or six 

 inches deep makes Doolittle " fighting mad," and he says he 

 has some " chunks of logic regarding how the bees will be 

 brooding sticks and vacant space during the time they should 

 be brooding queen eggs and larval and pupa bees, etc." 



