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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Oct. 24, 



Coj;)tnbuted /Vrticles^ 



On tinportant Apiarian SuhJ&cts, 



Large vs. Small Hives — A Review. 



BY CHAS. DADANT. 



After reading the great number of articles devoted to the 

 subject of large vs. small hives, I had concluded not to write 

 any more ou this question; but I see that many readers of the 

 bee-periodicals desire to see the discussion continued, so I will 

 try to refute the objections of some of the partisans of small 

 hives, and, in the following numbers, revise the whole ques- 

 tion, from the stand-point of a bee-keeper who, for more than 

 30 years, has studied it with the sole object of securing the 

 best possible results in honey-production. 



Mr. Davenport, on page 376, writes : " I have had 

 queens that would keep 10, and in a few cases even 12, 

 frames full of brood ; but these queens needed to be prolific, 

 for their bees were so short-lived that these colonies could not 

 store as much surplus as others whose queens did not keep 

 eight frames full." 



Our experience is altogether different. Our most prolific 

 queens rear the strongest colonies which always give us the 

 largest croos. What we want in a queen, above all things, is 

 great prolificness. The more bees In a hive, at the beginning 

 of the honey crop, the more honey is reaped, and I think the 

 opinion of Mr. Davenport is not accepted by one bee-keeper 

 in a hundred. 



In regard to the short living of bees from a very prolific 

 queen, I wonder what means Mr. Davenport has taken to as- 

 certain it! The colonies which are the most populous before 

 winter have generally the largest number of bees in the 

 spring, and, of course, at the beginning of the harvest as well. 

 Can Mr. Davenport explain how the eggs of a queen which is 

 able to lay but 2,000 eggs per day in the best season, can 

 produce bees that live longer than the daughters of a queen 

 that can lay 4,000 eggs in 24 hours ? 



Mr. Davenport continues : "Again, I have had very pro- 

 lific queens whose bees lived long enough ; but they were 

 worthless so far as surplus honey was concerned, for their en- 

 tire time and attention seemed to be devoted to rearing bees 

 and swarming." Indeed, Mr. Davenport seems to have had 

 very wonderful bees. There is an undeniable and well-au- 

 thenticated fact — the workers cease to take care of the brood 

 after they are about 1 5 to 18 days old. They then become 

 almost exclusively field-workers. Any one can easily verify 

 this fact by introducing an Italian queen in a pure-black col- 

 ony in the midst of the honey harvest. The black bees will 

 cease to work inside of the hive as soon as the young Italian 

 bees are old enough to take flight, when the number of young 

 bees is sufficient to fill the requirements for nurses. The 

 salivary glands, which assist in making the jelly of which the 

 larvae are fed, become atrophied in the old workers long be- 

 fore their usefulness is at an end as honey-gatherers. It is 

 very probable that in Mr. Davenport's experience, the profuse 

 breeding of which he speaks was begun too late, perhaps 

 owing to lack of stores, perhaps to some other cause, and in 

 such a case the numerous bees were of no use to gather the 

 crop, for it is not all to have prolific queens — they should be 

 given the means of producing bees in time for the honey crop, 

 which is often of so short duration. Much depends upon the 

 foresight and care of the bee-keeper ; for the bee-business is 

 " a business of details." 



As to the populous colonies swarming more than the 

 others, there is no doubt about that, especially if they are not 

 furnished all the room they need in time ; or if they are left 

 exposed to the direct rays of the sun ; or if their entrance- 

 room is inadequate to their requirements for travel and venti- 

 lation ; or if they are allowed to rear too large a quantity of 

 drones which annoy them by their bulk. There are many 

 things to be considered on this question of swarming, and it 

 may be almost entirely prevented if properly attended to. Our 

 natural swarming rarely reaches 5 per cent., and the fact is 

 that we could not keep up the number of our colonies if we 

 relied on natural swarming at all. We much prefer division 

 of colonies, which enables us to select our breeders, and 

 systematize our selection. 



A queen will rarely leave the hive as long as she finds 

 empty cells to receive her eggs, and the bees will rarely make 

 preparations to swarm if they have plenty of empty cells to 

 put their harvest. 



Mr. Davenport writes also : "Some of the advocates of 

 largo hives tell us that bees, in such hives, will rear a good 

 many more bees during the latter part of the season, and thus 

 have more bees for winter ; and, such being the case, they 

 will winter better and build up faster in the spring." Yes, I 

 am sure that such practice is the right way to success. But 

 Mr. D. thinks that such late breeding costs too much; he 

 says about $100 or more, in large apiaries. He prefers to 

 feed his bees in the spring, and he employs a man in every 

 apiary to do the work. Why did he not give us the amount of 

 his expenses in food, in work, the cost of wintering, and the 

 amountof loss in winter? 



But I am not alone in advocating the rearing of bees be- 

 fore winter. One of the strongest advocates of small hives 

 (Mr. B. Taylor, on page 40") writes that, last winter, he lost 

 70 colonies which were full of houey, because their queens 

 had ceased to lay about Sept. 15, and the number of bees in 

 the hives was too small for a good wintering. 



Mr. Davenport not only thinks that an 8-frame hive is 

 large enough, and that a queen which can just fill the eight 

 frames is better than one that can fill lO or more with brood, 

 but he writes also: "My experience has been that, as a gen- 

 eral thing, 8 frames are enough for the best queens that we 

 can get at the present time." But his practice does not agree 

 with the above assertions, for he says, on page 310: " From 

 strong colonies that do not get the swarming-fever at the com- 

 mencement of the flow (of honey), the two middle combs are 

 removed, and two empty ones put in their [lace. Then the 

 two outside ones are put next to these." Mr. Davenport is 

 evidently not satisfied with the amount of brood reared, since 

 he removes two combs of brood and puts two empty combs in 

 their place, and even wants to get the two outside combs filled 

 with brood, which are usually filled with pollen and honey for 

 provisions. His queens are thus expected to fill 10 combs 

 with brood, or 78,000 eggs in 21 days, or 3,700 eggs per 

 day. So, Mr. Davenport, who thinks 8 frames are enough, 

 on condition that he manipulates his bees so as to get the same 

 number of eggs as he would get in a 12-frame hive, does not 

 count the loss of time in going through these manipulations, 

 nor the loss in brood, for he writes that some of the larvse will 

 die, etc. 



In Gleanings for June 1, Mr. B. Taylor writes : " I have 

 great respect for the Dadants as bee-keepers, and their argu- 

 ment for large hives had almost persuaded me, but now comes 

 Mr. Dadant in the American Bee Journal of May 9, and 

 states that his average yield of extracted honey, from colonies 

 in his big hives, is only 50 pounds, and that his greatest yield 

 was only 150 pounds, in average, per colony. Friend Dadant, 

 you have, to me at least, giveu away the whole argument for 



your large combs and brood-chambers The seasons of 



1893 and 1894 were regarded as bad ones here, and yet we 

 harvested more fine comb honey each of those years than Mr. 

 Dadant says he gets in extracted in average good years. No, 

 Friend Dadant, you may go ahead with your big hives — I now 

 refuse to be persuaded." 



Mr. Taylor is sure that if his bees had been in our apiary, 

 his small hives, in 1893 and 1894, would have given him as 

 large crops as he got in Minnesota? Then it is the hive which 

 gives the houey, not the flowers. No doubt that in the middle 

 of the Desert of Sahara, the bees in his small hives would 

 gather a large honey crop ! Does Friend Taylor think that 

 there are no small hives in our neighboihood ? Does he think 

 that those small hives are yielding a surplus twice as large as 

 ours, and that we shut our eyes to the fact? No, Friend Tay- 

 lor, we do not get such crops here as they do in Minnesota. 

 Nor did we know that a man could harvest 50 pounds of comb 

 honey, on an average, netting probably $6.00 per colony, 

 and call it a bad season. Let me see: We have 350 colonies 

 of bees. At $6.00 per colony, in bad seasons, we would get 

 $2,100. Then in a good season, we would get the wages of 

 a Senator ! We had better move to Minnesota, and not let 

 Friend Taylor get rich without us ! 



Joking aside, we evidently do not live in as rich a honey 

 district as Friend Taylor does. Our country is well populated, 

 the land all in cultivation. There are but few honey-produc- 

 ing trees in our woods, and the main crop upcm which we de- 

 pend is white clover, although, in sufficiently wet seasons, we 

 get considerable honey from fall blossoms. But in the past 

 four years the white clover was all destroyed by drouth, and 

 even Friend Taylor's bees could not have found atiy thing 

 from which to gather honey. The only practical comparison 

 that can be made, must be made between hives of different 

 size in the same apiary, and on a sufficient scale to determine 

 that the inequality in results is not due to chance. This trial 

 we made years ago, as we have repeatedly said, and if any 



