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1861 



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SStli Year. 



CHICAG-O, ILL., JULY 11, 1895. 



No. 28. 



Corjtributcd /Vrticles. 



On Zmportant Apiarian Subjects. 



Hiving Swarms — More " Talking Back." 



BY F. L. THOMPSON. 



Replying to Mr. Abbott's request on page 361, I will give 

 just what Dr. Dubini says. After quoting a passage from 

 Sartori and Rauschenfel's " Apiculture in Italy," in which 

 they say that surplus is usually not to be looked for from 

 either the old colony or the swarm by the ordinary proceed- 

 ing. Dr. Dubini says : 



"This is the consequence of hiving the swarm on a vacant 

 stand in the apiary, instead of reserving for it the stand of 

 the old colony, and carrying the latter to the stand of a strong 

 colony which threatens to swarm." (One reason, then, is to 

 prevent swarming in the other colonies.) " The writers did 

 well to observe that in the practice alluded to, which is almost 

 universally followed, the swarm, with its quickly exhausted 

 workers, becomes deficient in young bees, and the old colony 

 finds itself despoiled of the honey-gatherers which went out 

 with the swarm. On the other hand, who does not see how a 

 swarm that is set on the stand of its parent colony enriches 

 itself with the old bees of the latter, and that the old colony 

 then gets all the honey-gatherers of the strong colony which 

 has yielded place to it ? The activity of the swarm, on the 

 stand of the old colony, reinforced by the old bees of the lat- 

 ter, will be such that in a short time it will be necessary to 

 give more room for surplus, so that if the old colony already 

 had a super on, this is to be placed over the swarm. Thus it 

 is the swarm which will give us surplus, and the old colony 

 will not yield more than a moderate harvest, but at any rate 

 it will produce enough for safe wintering, if, indeed, it does 

 not send out a (second) swarm." (Hero he uses a word which is 

 too much for my dictionary, but he doubtless refers to a sec- 

 ond swarm.) 



" This method of placing the swarm on the stand of the 

 old colony is indicated by the above-mentioned e.^cperienced 

 apiarists, not for natural swarms, but assuredly for artificial 

 swarms only." 



I must plead guilty to not having noticed the import of 

 that last sentence when writing my original note. It is the 

 only place in the article in which artificial swarms are re- 

 ferred to ; and near the beginning he says : " Now it is ex- 

 pedient to know from what colony the swarm issued," and 

 goes on to tell how that may be known without opening the 

 hives. The presumption is, that he himself is talking about 

 natural swarms. What to make out of the last sentence I 

 don't know. 



As Dr. Dubini is a reader of the American Bee Journal, 



he may perhaps in the future comment on Mr. Abbott's re- 

 marks. 



Overstocking. — On page 370, Mr. S. M. Carlzen tells of 

 1,500 colonies being kept within a circle having a diameter 

 of four or five miles. I am somewhat, though imperfectly, 

 acquainted with his locality, and am inclined to think that he 

 must mean radius instead of diameter; also, that even in that 

 case, 1,500 is a round number, from which perhaps several 

 hundreds could be knocked off without impairing its accuracy. 

 As long as overstocking is a fact, it does not matter how many 

 or how few colonies bring it about, in warning others off from 

 that locality. If the number given is a mistake, it would be 

 well to have it corrected, for otherwise those who claim that 

 it is hard to overstock a locality will be quoting the figure to 

 show what a large number can actually be kept on a limited 

 range without starving. On the other hand, if the figures are 

 accurate, the statement is interesting enough to warrant a 

 repetition. Overstocking is something of which little is 

 known, and reliable data are greatly wanted. 



I would like to give notice here to all foreign readers of 

 Ihe American Bee .lournal, that if they can give us Americans 

 any light on the subject of overstocking, the favor would be 

 greatly appreciated. Their carefully-prepared statistics of 

 apiculture would seem to indicate that they are in a position 

 to make an authoritative statement on the subject. 



"What Dr. Miller Thinks." — Glad to see Dr, Miller 

 poking up the animals again. Let the good work go on. He 

 pretends he doesn't want to be talked back to, but back num- 

 bers of the Review show that he raised his voice like a pelican 

 in the wilderness whenever he felt like it, and he can't blame 

 us if we do likewise. 



Unqueening Colonies. — Dr. Miller hits me in the right 

 spot on page 326. That shows one advantage of talking 

 back. Writers are apt to forget and leave too much to be 

 understood by their readers. When this happens, they should 

 be pulled up aud made to tell all about it. For instance, I 

 never clearly understood J. A. Golden's feeder, described on 

 page 213, until I saw it lately in Gleanings ; he depended too 

 much on the illustration which wasn't there. 



No wonder a beginner like the Doctor was mystified at 

 the fine distinction which appeared to be drawn between "a 

 frame of bees " and " a frame full of shaken bees," but I think 

 my copy would show a hyphen between the second "frame" 

 and " full," making "frame-full" — that is, two frames are 

 actually given to each nucleus, then the bees shaken from 

 another frame and added to the bees on the two frames, then 

 that frame replaced where it was taken from. 



I wish to say right here, though, that in spite of my " in- 

 terest " I would be only too glad to have some one arise and 

 prove all that work is unnecessary from a money point of 



