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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



May 2S, 



days the bees would have drawn out the starters and stored 

 most of the diseased honey taken with them from the old 

 combs ; and to remove the starters the fourth evening, and 

 give full sheets of comb foundation. By the time the full 

 sheets of foundation were drawn out, the diseased honey 

 would be used up, and then a perfect cure would be made in 

 every case so treated. Then by making wax out of the new 

 combs that were made out of the starters during the four 

 days, and the old foul combs, every thing would be all right 

 with every colony in nice, new combs made out of foundation. 

 I sent some foul-broody combs with honey in, to Dr. 

 Howard, of Fort Worth, Tex. He uncapped the sealed honey, 

 and carefully dipped the honey out of the cells without dis- 

 turbing the cell-walls, and then with a microscope he exam- 

 ined the honey and found the living germs of foul brood in it. 

 Will any man in the world say that if a colony of bees were to 

 rob the combs of the honey that Dr. Howard examined, and 

 then feed it to their larvso, that it would not give them foul 

 brood at once ? Woodburn, Ont., Canada. 



What Dr. Miller Thinks. 



Large Hives. — After several years of experiencing the 

 pleasure of handling 8-frame hives, it would seem a hard mat- 

 ter to go back to the 10-frarae hives of previous years. So it 

 gives me a pang of discomfort to read on page 298 a word 

 from Chas. Dadant, " We do not, and in fact cannot, depend 

 upon natural swarming when running for extracted honey 

 with large hives." For bad as unwieldly hives are, swarming 

 is still worse. 



Time of Extracting. — Dadant says : " When the honey- 

 yield is over." E. France thinks that will not do for some 

 who would have their crop of white honey spoiled by inferior 

 honey before and just after the white harvest. 



Air for Winter. — I think Dr. Gallup has struck a good 

 point on page 294, where he thinks bees have wintered badly 

 because the hives were too close. I was once surprised to find 

 a man who was very successful in wintering bees in box-hives, 

 and he had each hive on four blocks, so that all winter long 

 there was a space of half an inch under all four sides of his 

 hives. 



Taking off Honey.— Bro. Abbott says, on page 29-1 : 

 " After the honey is in the supers and capped over, the longer 

 it can be left on the hive the better it will be." I think that's 

 true, if you are after some good honey for your own table 

 without regard to looks. But if you want honey that will 

 bring the most money on the market, then the rule is, "The 

 longer you leave honey on the hive after it is sealed over, the 

 worse it will be." 



Talking Back.— I think the "Old Reliable" for May 9 

 has enough " talking back " in it to suit even F.L.Thomp- 

 son. I must confess it makes interesting reading, but I give 

 F. L. notice he better not talk back to me ! 



Taking off Sections. — Bro. Abbott says, on page 294, 

 that sections are sure to have little holes bitten in the cap- 

 pings when taken any other way than by the use of bee- 

 escapes. Not in this locality. I've taken off thousands of 

 sections without holes in the cappings long before escapes 

 were known. In some cases escapes are good things, but I 

 don't always use them, by any means. 



Unqdeening Colonies.— Out of respect for the originator 

 of the word. Father Langstroth, I prefer "unqueening" to 

 " dequeening." But whether it be dequeeningor unqueening, 

 I want to say to F. L. Thompson regarding his paragraph on 

 that topic on page 296, that if he often takes a notion to lay 

 aside his usual clear way of putting things to mix up his words 

 so darkly as he has in that paragraph, he may expect to see a 

 number arise and do some vigorous " talking back." Or is it 

 that I'm a little slow to spell out his meaning '? 



Flat Hive-Covers. — Edwin Bevins has a good cover 

 with that single board and its two heavy cleats, only when a 

 Doard takes a notion to twist— I mean twist, not warp — then 

 a cleat of cast-iron won't stop its making a bad fit. 



Working Long Hours. — I see trouble brewing between 

 B. Taylor and Rev. E. T. Abbott, on page 301. The form of 

 the first named gentleman certainly doesn't show that his 



habits lay much fat upon his bones, and I'm with Bro. Abbott 

 in trying to take things as easy as I can. Nevertheless, the 

 man who isn't willing when the busy time arrives to get up at 

 an unseemly season and work over hours, better quit bee- 

 keeping before he ever begins. 



Tin Separators. — On page 300, H. V. believes that a 

 coating of beeswax will prevent travel-stain of sections. It 

 would be interesting if H. V. would tell us the reason of this, 

 and whether his belief has been established by long observa- 

 tion. Marengo, III. 



Automatic Swarming — Queries and Comments. 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



A correspondent sent me two or three questions to an- 

 swer, and they proved to be of so much interest to mo that I 

 have concluded to give them to the readers of the American 

 Bee Journal, together with some comments thereon. 



1st. "It is well known that when a hive is full of bees, so 

 that they begin to think of ' laying out,' they will crowd into 

 an empty space which may be about the hive, much sooner 

 than they will go on the outside of the hive. Taking advan- 

 tage of this fact, suppose that as soon as the sections are filled 

 with bees, they being well at work, and before the swarming- 

 fever comes upon them, we bore a two or three inch hole in 

 one side of the hive, and on the inside of the same put a piece 

 of queen-excluding metal. Next we will bore a corresponding 

 hole of the same size in an empty hive, cover the same with 

 queen-excluding metal, and set this empty hive right up 

 against the other having the bees in it, so that the holes 

 match, and then put a queen-cell in this empty hive. Now 

 the point I wish to know is, will there not in time be a new 

 swarm of bees in that empty hive ?" 



That this will work just as outlined above I have my 

 doubts, but I think there may be something in it with some 

 modifications which may be of benefit to the bee-fraternity. 

 From past experience I judge that, did the bees go into the 

 empty hive and care for the cell until it hatched, the queen on 

 going out to meet the drone, would, on her return, enter the 

 wrong hive and be killed, thus spoiling our work. But what 

 is there to hinder placing a comb of honey and one of brood 

 in the empty hive, and then giving the queen-cell? 1 would 

 now warrant the bees from the old hive to go through the 

 qneen-exoluding metal, take care of the brood and cell, and 

 care for the queen just the same as if she were in an isolated 

 hive or nucleus, when in due time she will become fertile and 

 go to filling the combs with eggs. From all of my experience 

 in the past, in rearing queens as given in my book, in having 

 them reared above queen-excluding metal by the thousand, 

 while the old queen was doing her duty below, I am just as 

 sure that this plan would work as if I had tried it and proved 

 the same. 



2nd. " By using the plan which I have outlined above, 

 will it not prevent the original colony from swarming ? If so, 

 this will do away with some one to stay at home all the while 

 to watch for swarms during the swarming season, besides 

 proving a bonanza to those having out-apiaries which they 

 wisli to work for comb honey ?" 



Well, as I said before, I do not think It would work as the 

 .questioner gives it, but by using the suggestions given as I 

 have explained, I see no reason why it should not stop swarm- 

 ing entirely. As soon as the young queen gets to laying, or 

 before the old colony is a very strong one, take more combs of 

 brood from it and put in their places frames of foundation or 

 frames of worker-comb, so they will have no chance to build 

 drone-comb, putting the brood thus taken out over into the 

 hive having the young queen. Sections should now be placed 

 over the part of the new hive where the brood and combs are, 

 so that in no case the bees lack for room to store all the honey 

 there is coming in ; and I would have these sections in every 

 case filled with foundation, so that the bees would have no ex- 

 cuse for any desire to swarm by being loth to build comb. 

 Occasionally, or as often as the out-apiary is visited, move 

 more frames of brood over to the new hive, putting frames 

 filled with foundation in the place of the frames taken out 

 each time until the new hive is full, always putting on sections 

 as the bees seem to require. If I am correct in thinking the 

 above will do away with swarming, we shall have something 

 of great advantage, at least to all those working out-apiarles. 



3rd. "Will a colony thus managed store as much honey as 

 they would had they been kept in the old hive, and by some 

 means not allowed to swarm ?" 



If wo had that " some means" which would allow the bees 

 to work with a will all summer long, with no desire to swarm. 



