Jan. 5, 1899. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



(just as liberal feed is necessary when a cow is secreting' 

 milk), but in addition we lose in varYinjr quantities what 

 these same bees mig"ht haveg'athered from the fields if freed 

 from secreting and working wax. 



Contrary to all this, I believe that all normal colonies, 

 when g'athering nectar and ripening' and storing the same, 

 secrete more or less wax regardless of the need of it ; and 

 inore. that the secretion and manipulation of this wax is 

 principally by bees under field-age — bees that would have 

 been idle if not thus engaged. It seems to me that those 

 who make claim to the doctrine of the great loss of honey 

 •^vhen a colony has to build comb, make this assertion with- 

 out due consideration of all the facts. Let me offer a few 

 figures : 



A 10-frame hive, Langstroth size, takes nearh' two 

 pounds of wax to construct its comb. Surplus honey from 

 the same hive to the amount of 25 pounds, means about 

 three pounds of wax secreted, which, at the ratio of 15 of 

 honey to one of wax means 45 pounds of honey consumed in 

 comb construction. Suppose that the loss by bees being- 

 detained from the fields that otherwise would have been 

 there — say i-educing the field-force one-third, amount,s to 

 one-third- the total honey g-athered. This would be reason- 

 able surely. The brood-combs should contain not less than 

 ZS pounds, which added to the 25 of surplus received would 

 make 60 pounds. Thus the bees kept secreting wax and 

 building- it into comb, should have instead added to the total 

 store another 20 pounds. 



Put these figures together and what have we ? Forty- 

 five pounds of honey consumed in wax-secretion, 20 lost by 

 bees kept at home — total 65 pounds. If such a theory is 

 correct, a s-ivarin hived and building all its comb and yield- 

 ing a 25-pound surplus, should, if given all the comb they 

 could use, have yielded, in addition to the 25 pounds, 65 

 more — a total of go pounds of surplus honey.. Is not this a 

 reasonable conclusion ? 



My next will discuss details of experiment's to prove the 

 truth or fallacy of the general accepted theories. 



Larimer Co., Colo. 



Larg-e Hives for Either Comb or Extracted Honey. 



BY C. P. D.iDANT. 



THE following letter, which' was sent to the Editor of the 

 American Bee Journal, is referred to me for reply : 



Emtok York :— I think that many who are trvinir to solve the hive 

 question will be misled by Mr. Dadant's articles on the proper (?, size of 

 hive. It should be remembered that Mr. Dadant is an e.\tracted-honev 

 man. I have lookt in vain throufjh his writings for his emphatic advice 

 to use just as lar^jre a hive for comb honey as for extracted. 



I wish Mr. Dadant would answer this question : Do you advise just 

 as lartre a hive for comb as you do for extracted honey ? 



Until I became a specialist, two years ag-o, I used the 10-frame Laufr- 

 stroth size, exclusively. After trying- S-frariie and 10-frame hives in the 

 same yard. I have come to the conclusion that I can {jet more comb honev 

 per brood-comb with the smaller hive, and have fewer unfinisht sections. 



I now think- that those " who make their bread and butter by produc- 

 ing- honey to spread upon the bread and butter or others," should fig-ure 

 their production as so much per comb, and not so much per queen. 



After everything has been considered I think it will stand about this 

 way ; If you have nothing- but the care of your bees to take up your time 

 you will probably make more money with'a small hive. If you have a 

 farm to w-ork, you would better use a larger hive. " 



Yours truly, E. W. Bkowx. 



I would very much dislike to mislead any one, in what- 

 ever I write on bee-culture, but most especially on the hive- 

 question, which, as is well known, wa have tried to avoid, 

 as it has been so often rehearst and discust that the subject 

 has become .stale to us. But it appears that, as others find 

 that we succeed with a large hive, and hear that we prefer 

 it to others, and have good reasons for so doing outside of 

 •our practical experience, they make inquiries about it, and 

 this is why I have been requested to write a series of arti- 

 cles on the subject in Gleanings. So, if the subject proves 

 worthless, and our experience proves injurious to the bee- 

 keeping public, we will not feel as deserving of any blame. 



I am very free to say that we are not at present comb- 

 honey producers. All tlie comb honey that is produced in 

 our apiaries is produced by our boys, for their own pleasure, 

 on one. two or three hives, every sea.son, and I notice that 

 they take particular pains to select a very powerful colony 

 m every case. But we //(7zv(!><r« comb-hotiev producers, and 

 would be yet if we could get more than tw-ice as much for 

 comb honey as for extracted. But as long as we can sell 

 extracted honey freely for three-fifths to two-thirds of the 

 pnce we would get for comb, we will probably produce ex- 

 tracted honey. 



The experience of Mr. Brown we notice to be similar to 

 that of many others. They try a small hive— the 10-frame 



hive— and finally change to something still smaller. We 

 tried the 10-frame Langstroth hive with something still 

 larger, and chang-ed to the latter. 



, I have often noticed that the supporters of small hives 

 agree that the large hive may be g-ood for extracted honey, 

 but is not .suitable for comb honey ; but I have never seen 

 any one give a single reason for making this difference. 

 The only attempt I have met to an explanation of the dif- 

 ference, is in an article by G. M. Doolittle, in Gleanings, in 

 which Mr. Doolittle says : 



"If the queen has all the vacant cell-room her prolificness requires, 

 more room is only a damaj^e to our crop of comb honey, for in the finding: 

 of vacant cells in the brood-chamber, at the beginning of the honey har- 

 vest, comes an 'accustoment ' to the brood-chamber for storing- honev, 

 instead of the sections, and thus the queen is crow-ded upon with honev, 

 instead of said honey going into the sections," etc. 



That is, if there is honey produced, with a large hive 

 and not a very prolific queen, and there is plenty of room in 

 the brood-chamber, this honey will be stored in the brood- 

 chamber. This is just our experience, and when producing- 

 comb honey with large hives, we would do as some of the 

 large producers of the East are doing, so I am told, who 



C. p. Dadant. 



have nothing to say publicly, tho they quietly work and 

 produce tons and tons of honey, by simply reducing the 

 number of combs, just at the opening- of the crop, to the ex- 

 act number that are covered by the brood, which just as 

 efficienth' forces the bees into the supers as if a very power- 

 ful colony had been placed in a small hive. 



When we produced comb honey, let it be remembered, 

 we were already using the large hives, and we did not prac- 

 tice the above-mentioned method, which I am told is so very 

 succe.'^sful with men like Elwood ; and the result %yas, with 

 us, that we ahvays had too much honey in the brood-combs 

 for winter, and we were in the habit of extracting it ; but I 

 wish to emphasize the fact, that, side by side with smaller 

 hives, our colonies were, on the average, ahead of the other.s, 

 just that quantity of honej' which we were able to take from 

 the brood-combs. 



No\y, please bear in mind that our experience was not 

 based upon a hive or two, or upon one year or two, but that 

 we have had as many as a hundred hives of one style, while 

 we had two or three hundred of the other style, for years. 

 It has always been a wonder to me, how comb-honey pro- 

 ducers could do -without an extractor, and this o%ving- to the 

 fact that, in large hives, we always had .some that had more 

 honey in the brood-combs than they needed for winter, 

 when producing- comb honey. The Elwood plan would have 

 done away with this, and would have forced the bees to put 

 that honey in the supers, since the hive, in cases where the 



