1903 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



999. 



from these years of watching- I see no rea- 

 son for chang-ing the conclusion that I form- 

 ed at that time." 



"But don't you find little knots of dead 

 bees away from the main cluster after each 

 warm spell during- the winter? " 



" After the bees once get thoroughly clus- 

 tered I do not see this loss occurring to any 

 such extent after each warm spell, and but 

 little after a very mild fall; and for the 

 reasons I have given you, I now pay no at- 

 tention to passageways through the combs 

 for bees, nor have I done so for the past 

 twelve 3'ears. " 



" I suppose it would do no harm for me 

 to trj' a few with holes through the combs?" 



"No, not in the least. That is what 

 every one should do where there is a point 

 of dispute. Try the thing for yourself, and 

 when, from these trials, you become con- 

 vinced as to the right, adhere to the right 

 and let your light regarding the rig-ht shine 

 out to others." 



" Well, I must be going now as I see it is 

 nearly nine o'clock." 



"Just a word or two before you go, so 

 j'ou can understand this wintering matter 

 a little better: After the cluster of bees has 

 become fully settled for winter, and this 

 loss of old bees has passed away, a colony 

 will lose but few bees for six weeks or two 

 months, and will remain quiet. If at this 

 time a warm day occurs so they can Qy 

 freely they again cluster back quietly and 

 remain so about the same length of time, 

 when the}' again desire to fly; and if such 

 a chance occurs all will go well, and the 

 bees will winter well. Thus we have a col- 

 ony in a normal condition, and all the cold 

 ever obtained in any portion of the world 

 where bees can be kept with profit (occur- 

 ring during this period between flights) 

 will not freeze or materially injure them if 

 the\' have plenty of good stores within easy 

 reach of them." 



" Oh, yes! Just one question more before 

 I go. Did you notice Dr. Miller's calling 

 attention to an omission of yours, by j'our 

 not telling us when you took the dummies 

 out, where you hived a swarm on half- inch 

 starters, and what you did after taking the 

 dummies out by way of supplying their 

 places? " 



" Yes, I noticed what Bro. Miller said on 

 page 911, and thank him for calling atten- 

 tion to the matter. I have been so driven 

 this 3 ear that I have left undone many 

 things I ought to have done; and the leaving- 

 out of that part was one of the ' left ' things. 

 The dummies are kept in till the close of 

 the white honey harvest, when they are ta- 

 ken out and the hive filled with drawn or 

 full combs, which the bees generally fill 

 with dark honey to an extent suflficient for 

 the bees to winter on." 



" Where do j'Ou get these drawn combs?" 

 "By the process of shaken or driven 

 swarms, now in use by very many of our 

 best apiarists, this matter is very easj^ 

 When the swarm is made we have the combs 

 of brood and honej' after being freed from 



the bees. 1 place these combs of brood, etc., 

 on a weak colony, and at the next making 

 of swarms another hive of these beeless 

 combs is put on, till in this way I often 

 have three, four, and sometimes five hives 

 of comb, brood, and honey on one of these 

 weak colonies, or on one which was weak 

 to start with, but not weak in bees now that 

 the most of the brood has emerged. When 

 the dummies are removed these tiered-up 

 combs are just the ones which are used to 

 fill out the hive; or, in other words, used 

 to take the place of the dummies." 



" Glad I asked you. It is all plain to me 

 now." 



We have on hand quite a number of man- 

 uscripts on the subject of killing skunks. 

 We have already given place to several, 

 two of them in this issue, and so we think 

 we have, perhaps, given enough space to this 

 subject for the present. 



A Georgia correspondent of the South- 

 land Queen takes Mr. J. E. Chambers 

 sharply to task for asserting that no one 

 but a fool will use wire in brood-frames. 

 He says if this is true, "there is a big lot 

 of us fools." He then adds, " Why, combs 

 without wire will break out and ruin enough 

 in one season to pay for wire, time, etc., 

 enough to justify the bee-keeper in putting 

 in half of his time in wiring his frames." 



SELF-SPACING OR LOOSE FRAMES. 



Mr. Hutchinson, in the Revieiv, finds 

 that there is a feeling against self-spacing 

 frames, particularly the Hoffman. He him- 

 self wants nothing better than the old-style 

 Langstroth, with y% top-bar. His experi- 

 ence is quite different from my own, for 

 most of the people I run across in my trav- 

 els much prefer the Hoffman; and it seems 

 to me I can do twice the work with a non- 

 burr-comb self-spacing frame that I can 

 with the ordinary thin and narrow top-bar 

 Langstroth that will be all matted up with 

 wax braces. The leading supply- manu- 

 facturers of the country furnish the old- 

 style Langstroth, thick-top Langstroth, the 

 Hoffman, and closed-end frames. The pur- 

 chaser can have any one of them as an op- 

 tion. I do not know how the trade of other 

 manufacturers runs, but ours runs almost 

 exclusively to the Hoffman. Fearing that 

 it might be too much of a good thing, we 

 attempted to steer the trade, two years ago, 

 toward a thick-top unspaced frame, but 

 it would have none of them. I have talked 

 with some large extracted honey producers 



