626 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



Oct. 5, 1899. 



things ready for another picture, the photographer snapt 

 this one. 



The four years preceding this year I averaged 100 

 pounds of honey per colony, spring count ; but this year it 

 has dropt to about 35 pounds. 



Bee-keeping is only a side-issue with me, my daily voca- 

 tion being "wool finishing;" notwithstanding, with the 

 help of a bicycle I can be my own salesman and market my 

 own crop, and occasionally I have to buy more to tide me 

 over. F. G. Herman. 



Bergen Co., N. J. 



^ 



Queen-Excluders— Is their Use Advisable ? 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



A CORRESPONDENT writes me that a bee-friend of 

 his thinks there is no need of using queen-excluders 

 over the whole top of the hive under the surplus ar- 

 rangement, but just under the front and back end, putting a 

 thin board under the center,and thus save laying out so much 

 money on queen-excluders. And from what he further 

 writes I judge that he fears that the bees will not work as 

 well over the board as they would were the whole top of 

 the hive covered witli the queen-excluding metal. He closes 

 his letter by saying, " Won't you tell us thru the columns 

 of the American Bee Journal what you think in the 

 matter ?" 



Well, I not only endorse those " fears " of the corres- 

 pondent, but had he said he knew that bees would not work 

 over the board as well as they would without it, I should 

 have endorst it equally quick. To be sure, I have known 

 bees to go clear around division-boards and up into the cap 

 of the hive, doing quite a business in this way building 

 comb and storing honey there, but from close observation I 

 am satisfied that the more perfect the connection between 

 the brood department and the surplus arrangement the 

 more readily the bees start to work, and the quicker the 

 bees start in the sections the better the results in the num- 

 ber of pounds of honey. 



But I think I hear some one say, " If this is so, why do 

 you recommend excluders at all, for the connection between 

 the two departments cannot be as perfect with excluders as 

 without them ?" Very probablj' this is correct, but in re- 

 ply I would say that it is not the largest number of pounds 

 of honey that is always the most profitable to the apiarist ; 

 for if so, why not do as our fathers used to, hive our bees 

 in barrels? Elisha Gallup once said that bees would store 

 as much honey in a barrel or nail-keg as in any of the 

 modern hives, and I have yet to hear any one dispute the 

 assertion. Then why not do it? 



Ah I but honey stored in this way is not in marketable 

 shape. And honev stored without queen-excluders, espe- 

 cially where very shallow frames are used, is not always in 

 marketable shape, for thousands of sections have been 

 spoiled for market by having brood in them where excluders 

 were not used. I contend that more honey in marketable 

 shape can be secured by the use of separators and excluders 

 than can be without them ; and this is just the reason why 

 I use them. 



Our correspondent hints that the reason for not using 

 the excluding metal, but a board over the center of the 

 brood-nest, is that the field-bees when returning with their 

 loads of honey do not go up thru the center of the hive, but 

 at the ends. I think this a mistake, for certainly the most 

 of the hives of our fathers allowed them to go up nowhere 

 else, and they secured much surplus in that way, my father 

 taking as much as 75 pounds of comb hone.v from a single 

 new swarm with a two-inch hole bored in the center of the 

 top of the hive leading to the surplus department as the 

 only means of communication between the two. 



Then our correspondent asks further : " If the fore- 

 going is right, does this theory not hold good concerning 

 excluders that stand vertical? I am using large frames, 

 and have much of my honey stored at the sides. Now when 

 the bees march from the entrance toward the excluders do 

 they not move along at the bottom of the hive ? and do 

 they not tlierefore go thru the lower rows of zinc ? If I am 

 right in this, how many rows would be needed before I used 

 a thin board from them to the top of the hive ?" 



It is evident that my correspondent, as well as his bee- 

 friend, is laboring under the delusion so often taught in the 

 past, that the bee which gathers a load from the field must 

 of necessity deposit that load in the surplus receptacles. 

 For this reason outside entrances were made at the top of 

 the hive, to be opened when the harvest came, so the bees 



could go direct from the fields to the boxes, thus saving 

 them that much of travel and time, for it was too bad to 

 have them traveling and being jostled and rubbed against 

 all the way from the lower entrance up thru the crowded 

 hive in the dark, when they could just as well go right from 

 the field by daylight to the combs where they were to store 

 the honey. 



However nice and practical this appeared, the coming of 

 the Italian bee virtually stopt up this upper entrance, for it 

 was soon found that when there were only black bees 

 going in and out at the entrance, just before' the Italians 

 commenced to work in the fields, there were very few if any 

 black bees in the sections ; and a look thru the glass showed 

 these black laborers giving up their loads of honey to the 

 young Italians upon their return from the fields, allowing 

 these nimble-footed young ones to run up-stairs with the 

 honey, taking the shortest and quickest way thej- could, 

 whether at the top or bottom, front or back end, or right 

 straight up thru the center. 



Moreover, it was ascertained that, unless there was a 

 very large yield of honey, these young ones held this honey 

 in their honey-sacs, or deposited it in the brood-combs right 

 among the brood, wherever an empt3' cell was found, till it 

 was sufficiently ripened to be stored in the sections or 

 placed permanently in the combs. 



It is about time that the average bee-keeper comes to 

 the conclusion that bees have no paths staked out, nor 

 lawns with " Keep Off the Grass " notices posted up so a& 

 to guide them in certain directions in which they should go 

 with their loads of pollen and nectar. The natural instinct 

 of the bees is to cluster with and about the brood, and de- 

 posit their honey above and around it, and the more they 

 are allowed to conform to this instinct the better will be the 

 results, only we must guide them enough so that their pro- 

 duct will be in the most salable form when brought to a 

 completion. Onondaga Co., N. Y. 



Description of a Wisconsin Bee-Cellar. . 



BY WM. M. BARNES. 



MY cellar for wintering bees is 16x20 feet, and 6>< feet 

 deep. It has a stone wall one foot thick and 3 feet 

 high, then fiom where the wall rests the cellar is dug 

 out 3>2 feet deep in yellow clay, and is smaller all around 

 by one foot than the inside of the wall, thus leaving an off- 

 set of one foot all around the cellar. The sides of the cellar 

 are left sloping, so that there is no danger of the dirt cav- 

 ing off. 



There are two outside doors made of matcht pine, being 

 two thicknesses of lumber, with a parting strip of oak one 

 inch thick all around the doors and between the two thick- 

 nesses of lumber, thus making a dead-airspace in the doors. 

 One door shuts even with the inside of the wall, and swings 

 into the cellar, and the other door swings outward, and is 3 

 feet from the inside door. The wall at the doors extends 

 down as far as the bottom of the cellar. The opening at 

 the top of the doors and between them is covered with a 

 trap-door, which is covered with galvanized iron. This trap- 

 door can be raised when the other doors are closed, and 

 secured, and the space packt full of straw or planer-shav- 

 ings, if necessary. 



From the outside door there is an entrance-way dug, 

 and in this there is a ventilator 30 feet long, 8x10 inches in- 

 side measure, made of 2-inch oak plank. The outside end is 

 wide open ; the inside end extending inside of the cellar 3 

 feet, and the opening is closed with a register. 



The upward ventilation is secured by a common 6-inch 

 stove-pipe, the lower end coming down within 4 feet of the 

 bottom of the cellar, the upper end extending thru the roof 

 of the building used for a shop over the cellar, making the 

 pipe 22 feet long, thus causing plenty of draft. 



I now have the wall outside graded with dirt to the top 

 of the wall, then 10 inches of old sawdust as banking 

 around the building. 



I moved my bees into this cellar Nov. 28, 1898, and kept 

 a thermometer there. Up to Dec. 14 1 found that the tem- 

 perature was 41 degrees above zero— a little too cool, still 

 the bees were quiet, and I thought the temperature might 

 rise as the cellar dried out, as it was quite new. I had 96. 

 colonies in the cellar, and could have put in 50 more with- 

 out crowding. 



I wish the older ones in the bee-business would'Jshovr 

 me my errors, and where my cellar may fail. 



Richland Co., Wis. 



