586 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Sept. 12, 



CONDUCTED BY 

 DR. C. C. JUILLER. AIAREXGO, ILL. 



[Questions may be mailed to the Bee Journal, or to Dr. Miller direct.! 



Starting: ui Bee-Eeeping. 



I desire to go into the bee-business. 1. How many and 

 what kind of bees should I buy ? 



2. \VilI it pay better to buy large colonies in April and 

 May, at SI. 00 per colony, or pay $2.00 for them in the log- 

 hive ? I have had some experience with bees for about five 

 years. J. A. S. 



Tracy City,Tenn. 



Answers. — 1. Two colonies is a good number to start 

 with, but as you have had experience you might add to that 

 number according to your experience, perhaps starting with 

 10 colonies. Get the nearest you can to pure Italians, but if 

 you can"t get Italians near by, get blacks, or any kind you 

 can, and then Italianize them. 



2. Better get the swarms at a dollar each, and have them 

 put into good, up-to-date hives with movable-frames. 



Carrying Out Brood— Pea-Bloom, and Golden-Bod. 



1. My bees are carrying out the young brood about half 

 ready to hatch. Can you tell me the cause ? They lie out 

 over the hive and don't work much, doing nothing in the 

 supers, but carrying in some pollen. 



2. Do bees gather honey from pea-bloom and golden-rod ? 

 Dyersburg, Teun., Aug. 21. H. M. P. 



Answers. — 1. The probability is that they are getting so 

 little stores that they think they can't afford to support a lot 

 of drones, so they are carrying out the half-grown drone-larvaj. 



2. Yes, but I don't know how much. There's great 

 diversity of opinion as to the value of golden-rod as a honey- 

 plant. Some say it yields well, others say it doesn't amount 

 to anything. Probably it acts differently in different places, 

 and perhaps at different times. 



Wintering Bees — Why Did they Swarm ? 



1. I winter my bees out-of-doors in 8-frame dovetailed 

 hives, with supers filled with chaff, and find that much frost 

 gathers under the flat covers and melts when a thaw comes, 

 and runs down, wetting the chaff more or less at the ends and 

 covers, which afterwards freezes and sometimes molds. How 

 shall I avoid this trouble ? 



2. Is it better to let the bees have 8 frames, or to remove 

 the two outside ones and replace with chaff-packed division- 

 boards ? 



8. I had a fine, large swarm to issue Aug. 10, at 4:30 



p.m., when honey had been so scarce for a month that bees 



could hardly gather a living. The weather being very hot 



and dry, I opened the hive and found some queen-cells nearly 



finished. Why did those bees swarm ? J. M. R. 



Viola, W. Va. 



N 



Answers. — 1. There must be sufficient leakage to allow 

 the moisture slowly to escape before It condenses on the cover 

 or walls. Some have an inch hole covered with wire-cloth, in 

 one end of the cover or cap. 



2. Counting trouble and all in the case, I believe I'd leave 

 the eight frames as they are. You may tell better by trying 

 both ways side by side. 



3. It's hard to account for all the freaks of bees. From 

 what you say I can't see any reason at all for their swarming. 

 Possibly their being in a hot place may have had something 

 to do with it. 



■ — • — ■ 



Wintering on Langstroth Frames on End — Bearing 

 Queens in Upper Stories. 



1. In " What Dr. Miller Thinks," on page 45-1, you say, 

 "What will be the use of alternating the frames, etc.?" 



There may not be any advantage in it after all, but I 

 have seen it in print so often, that the right way to winter 

 successfully is to have a deep hive with plenty of capped 

 honey in it, so that the whole cluster will have food enough 



over them to last them until spring without their having to 

 move in any direction but up, and not break cluster at all ; 

 and It seemed so plausible that I had come to think it was the 

 correct thing, and have been experimenting in that direction 

 for several years. I have up-ended the whole hive, which was 

 a bad mistake, as there was not room enough below the 

 frames, and the dead bees clogged between the frames and 

 made a mess. Then I tried two bodies high, with 4 and 5 

 frames in each, and both sides packed, and in only one of 

 eight did they stay in the lower story. The rest all went to 

 the top, and left capped honey below. 



Last winter I tried the plan as reported in the Bee Jour- 

 nal, with perfect success as far as loss of individual bees was 

 concerned, and incidentally as far as consumption of food 

 (notice the last sentence in '•Experiments on Wintering," 

 page 459), but not in having them stay at the bottom of the 

 hive and work up gradually as they consumed the honey 

 directly over them. One reason why not, was that when I 

 up-ended the hives in the fall, about all the frames were half 

 full of capped honey along the top-bar, with a little capped 

 brood in some (the laying was over), and they were fed on top 

 until the empty cells were filled and capped over half way 

 down. Naturally, the first food consumed was the uncapped 

 in the lower quarter of the frames. After they had gotten 

 up that far, they concluded they might as well keep right on 

 and go to the top where it was warmer. They know when 

 they feel good, just as well as " homo" does. 



Well, you can see by alternating the frames there will be 

 old capped honey in one frame, and empty cells in the other 

 frame next to it — a regular zigzag in the lower half of the 

 frames, and they will not have the same chance to go up that 

 they did last winter. I want to keep them down, even if they 

 winter as well at the top, just from the idea that it seems 

 more natural that they should breed in the lower part of the 

 hive first — they do all summer, why not in spring ? 



I have 14 colonies, and they will all be wintered on five 

 frames each, stood on end, next winter, and that will tell the 

 story with me about wintering. 



I write this to you because I would like to have you try 

 some (say 10) the coming winter, and see how it works at 

 Marengo. 



I take notice that some old writers of the American Bee 

 Journal are hinting that perhaps it might do to stand the 

 shallow-frame hives on end ; and, between you and me, they 

 will try it, but they won't " let the cat out of the bag" until 

 the spring is over. 



2. I tried Doolittle's plan for rearing queens. I could not 

 get a cell started in the upper story. I then got capped queen- 

 cells from a brood-nest, and put one each on a frame of brood 

 in the upper story of six hives (middle of clove.-) ; two were 

 torn down ; two others, queens found dead on the queen-ex- 

 cluder ; two others that I saw, queens alive. I could not find 

 any at all in a week after, with two excluders between the 

 two bodies — (of course a hole for exit was in the upper body). 

 Good thing in Borodino, N. Y.; no good in Lancaster, Pa. 

 Ergo ; you might find it so with up-ended frames, but I doubt 

 it. T. T. 



Lancaster, Pa. 



Answers. — 1. Your statement was that sealed honey 

 would not keep the bees from going to the top, and 

 from that one would understand that in any case bees would 

 go right to the top, in which case alternating the frames would 

 do no good, for even if the frames were all filled with honey, 

 the bees would go up through them to the top. I'm rather 

 inclined to the opinion that you mean they will go through 

 sealed honey in a lower story to get up into the upper story. 

 If I am not mistaken, bees" seem to like sealed honey over 

 them, and if they are in a hive full of sealed honey they will 

 stay just under it, working their way up as the honey is eaten. 

 With the frames on end, there were empty cells all the way to 

 the top, and, as you found, the bees followed those empty cells 

 to the top. I'm a little afraid you'll not find the thing so very 

 different even with the zigzag arrangement, for the empty 

 cells will still have some effect, even if alternated with sealed 

 combs. I suspect, however, that you can accomplish your 

 purpose to keep them down by setting the frames on end quite 

 early, or right away. In that case the bees would have time 

 to seal up the honey above them, and thus there would be no 

 empty cells to lead them up. You might help the matter by 

 uncapping all the honey in one-half the frame at the time of 

 setting on end ; that is, in the part that will be the lower half 

 when set on end, but it will hardly be wise to do this unless 

 done pretty early. If done too late, I think the bees will' 

 carry the unsealed honey to the top and seal it there. 



2. I suspect that the same management in Lancaster 

 would produce the same results as at Borodino with regard to 



