198 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Mar. 28, 



contend with. Between Oct. 10 and March 15, that is, five 

 months, nothing can be gathered. If the weather would only 

 stay cold enough to put the bees to sleep, and keep them 

 snugly sleeping all that time, it would be well, but such is not 

 the case. Instead of that, we have a perpetual succession of 

 a few warm days followed by rain or snow, then a few cold, 

 sometimes very cold days, then warm again, and so on through 

 the whole winter. During the warm spells, the bees will fly 

 out in search of honin- or water, but a good many are chilled 

 and never come back, more or less brood will be started, honey 

 will be consumed, and the bees, that is, those which do not 

 perish outside, will more or loss wear themselves out, and all 

 to no purpose. The next cold wave will chill some of the bees 

 not clustered close enough, and invariably a part of the brood, 

 as it cannot be all covered when the cluster contracts closely 

 on account of the cold. The process is repeated from time to 

 time through the whole winter, and when the spring comes we 

 find ourselves with colonies having consumed nearly all their 

 provisions, occasionally some starved, and the number of bees 

 considerably reduced, and what bees are left nearly worn 

 out by their useless attempts at rearing brood out of season. 

 For the edification of those who may doubt the above state- 

 ment, I will refer to a short communication from a Tennes- 

 sean, inserted in the "ABC of Bee-Culture," under the 

 article on spring dwindling. 



Well, what can be done ? Only one thing. Use chaff 

 hives or some equivalent. With a chaff hive, it takes some 

 time for the heat of the sun to reach the bees inside so as to 

 make them fly ; and in the afternoon of warm days, thousands 

 of bees will come out of single-walled hives exposed to the 

 sun, only to be chilled by the cold air outside, or even die on 

 the snow ; while those in chaff hives will stay at home until 

 the weather is warm enough to fly safely. 



As to the brood reared I think fully as much, and perhaps 

 more, will be reared in the chaff hives, but on account of the 

 protection afforded by the chaff, only very little or none at all 

 will be chilled. This is not theory, it is the result of several 

 years of experience. 



A peculiarity of East Tennessee is that, owing to our ele- 

 vation above the level of the sea the nights are always cool 

 except during the hottest months of the year — from about the 

 middle of June to the middle of August. This makes it nec- 

 essary to protect the surplus receptacle as well as the brood- 

 nest, at least during the fore-part of the honey season. Few 

 people are aware of the fact that most of the comb-building 

 and the puttieg of honey in the sections is done during the 

 night, and if the supers are too cold, the honey will be left in 

 the brood-nest, the queen's laying crowded out, swarming 

 developed, etc. During the activity of the day, the honey 

 coming from the field will be stored in the nearest empty cells. 

 at least most of it. During the night it will be handled ( if 

 that expression can be used), evaporated by the bees, and car- 

 ried up-stairs. If the supers are too cold, such work is 

 stopped and the honey left in the brood-nest. 



As to the best construction of hives to obtain a sufficient 

 protection, and yet admit easy handling of supers, I have 

 little to say. Some time in the future, I may take up tlie sub- 

 ject again. Whatever means will be adopted to secure such 

 protection, will also have the advantage of protectiug the bees 

 against the excessive heat of the day, and, so to speak, store 

 that heat for the night use, and hereby increase the surplus by 

 equalizing the temperature through both the day and the 

 night. 



A third consideration is the size of the hives, or rather the 

 brood-nest. Before going any further, I would ask the reader 

 to look carefully over my article on the honey-resources of 

 East Tennessee. (See the Bee Journal for Dec. 6, 1894.) 

 As it will be seen, our honey season ( leaving the fall flow out 

 of consideration) lasts from March 15, or about, to the middle 

 of July — a period of four months. During that time, the 

 honey comes in from different sources, but not regularly, and 

 never in very great quantities. It is also impossible to tell in 

 advance which sources will be good and which will fail. The 

 sourwood is the surest of all. Under which circumstances 

 there is but one way of managing, that is, keep the ccAonics 

 strong all the time, so that whenever honey can be gathered, 

 there should be a sufficient force of bees to make the most of 

 it. Where the honey comes in in great quantities and at some 

 definite time of the year, some other plan may be better, but I 

 say again, where surplus honey has to be gathered little by 

 little, and in a very irregular way, at that, during a period of 

 four months, there can be but one successful kind of manage- 

 ment — keep your colonies sti'oinj all tlie time ! This has been 

 my experience. 



Strong colonies mean large brood-nests. A strong colony 

 can, by feeding, spreading the brood, constant watching and 

 manipulating, be built in a small-sized brood-nest, but cannot 



be maintained. Mr. Doolittle, our most successful small 

 brood-nest manipulator, says himself that a colony thus 

 treated attains a maximum of strength and then decreases, 

 and that the management must be such that (in his locality) 

 the maximum should be attained at the opening of the bass- 

 wood honey-flow. But even then, such results cannot be 

 obtained without constant watching and manipulating, and 

 involves a considerable work. And where one Doolittle or one 

 Miller succeeds, 999 bee-keepers would either fail, or ruin 

 their colonies completely. 



I have had large brood-nests only during the last three 

 years. So far I have not reached very conclusive results. I 

 have always drawn on the large hives to make up whatever 

 losses occurred, or built up weak colonies. Bad seasons and 

 bee-paralysis have interfered .more or less. As far as I can 

 see, the strength of the colony is at least in proportion to the 

 size of the brood-nest, and the amount of surplus obtained at 

 least, and probably more, than in proportion to the size of the 

 brood-nest. I mean by that, that eight hives of thirteen 

 frames each will probably give more surplus, and certainly as 

 much, as thirteen hives of eight frames each. There might 

 be an exception the first year, as of two equal swarms put 

 into different sizes of brood-uests, the one in the large brood- 

 nest will need more time to build up to full strength, but the 

 following spring the superior strength will begin to tell on the 

 result. But should the result be equally good, there would be 

 yet several advantages in favor of the large brood-nest. The 

 first would be less swarming, and, as I said before, a colony 

 that refrains from swarming will give more surplus in this 

 locality than one that did swarm and with its swarm combined. 

 Remember, here, that I am writing exclusively from a comb- 

 honey producer's stand-point. 



The second is, that a strong colony in a large brood-nest 

 hive will take care of itself the year around, never needs any 

 feeding (providing, however, that no honey should ever be 

 taken out of the brood-nest) and will invariably winter well ; 

 even if queenless in the fall enough bees will be left in the 

 spring, to start again, with the help of a queen or some brood 

 to rear one. Other minor advantages are freedom from rob- 

 bing, quickness in taking possession of the surplus boxes, 

 ability to protect their brood against the cold during the 

 winter and spring, much larger swarms, and what seems 

 strange at first, early swarming, if there is any swarming at 

 all. But, after all, it is easy to see that a strong colony will 

 be crowded before a weak one, not only on account of its 

 original strength, but also on account of its ability to rear 

 brood earlier and in much larger quantity. 



The last condition is prevention of swarming, if possible 

 (I am referring to the comb-honey producing kind of bee- 

 keeping). There is but one way — removing the queens at the 

 opening of the swarming season. The drawback in this 

 locality is a certain loss of brood that would just then produce 

 workers ready to take advantage of our best honey-flow (the 

 sourwood). This last ought to be minimized. In 189:3, I 

 announced my intention to experiment largely in that line, 

 but 1894 was so bad for the bee-keepers and the bees that I 

 did too little to report, and had to postpone full experiments 

 until this year. I want here to blame severely all our text- 

 books for not even mentioning this subject, or if they do (only 

 2 or 3 I think have done it), they dismiss it with only a few 

 words of blame. 



In reading my article on "East Tennessee Horsey-Re- 

 sources," I see it is liable to be misconstrued, as implying the 

 idea that East Tennesseans are a bad set of people. This, I 

 am happy to say, is not so. There are good and bad people 

 here, as anywhere else, but taken as a whole, certainly as good 

 as can be found anywhere else on the earth. I have been 

 treated here as kindly and as well in every respect as any- 

 where else I have been, and as well as if I had been a native- 

 born ; and I feel as much at home here, perhaps even more, 

 than I would in the country where I was born. 



Knoxville, Tenn. 



Mauagement to Prevent Spring Dwindling. 



BY MRS. A. L. HALLENBECK. 



With the first warm days of spring, which usually come 

 in March and April, the active work of the season for the 

 bee-keeper begins. Colonies should be carefully examined 

 that none are short of stores, hives carefully protected that 

 brood-rearing once commenced shall have no check. We are 

 still likely to have cold weather, and if not well protected 

 colonies will suffer great loss, not only of bees, but of brood 

 also, which will become chilled and die, and our bees will 

 suffer a little later, or with spring dwindling, which thins the 



