PUBLISHED EVERY WEEK 



AT SI.OO PER ANNUM. 



35th Year. 



CHICAGO, ILL., DEC. 26, 1895. 



No. 52 



Cot)irihutcd /Vrticlcs^ 



On Iznportant Jlpiarian Sulyjects, 



Large Hives ; Size aud Shape of Hives ; 

 Conditions Necessary to Safe Winter- 

 ing of Bees. 



and 



BY CHAS. DADANT. 



(Continued from page 790.) 



I was confirmed in the idea that large hives are better 

 than small ones, by another remark which I made at that time, 

 at the apiary of one of my neighbors. He had five or six hives 

 in a covered apiary facing south. Those hives were placed 

 upon strips made of inch lumber, two inches wide, and nailed 

 edgwise on stakes driven into the ground, so as to form a sort 

 of rack. The hives had no bottom-boards, for our friend 

 thought that bees succeeded best when they had plenty of air. 

 Although the hives were very large, the bees, during the hot 

 season, would build their combs downward in the empty space 

 below, and during a good honey crop they even extended them 

 on the sides and upwards; so that combs were built between 

 the hives, and most of his hives showed, on the outside, the 

 rudiments of combs thathad been cut off with a knife. Strange 

 to say, colonies in these hives wintered successfully, and we 

 were very much astonished, in one of the hardest winters, to 

 find that he had not lost a single colony, while our losses had 

 been heavy. 



Here is another instance : I went to a sale in the neigh- 

 borhood. This was in 1S68. The farmer was selling out, 

 and I wanted a cow and the bees that he had, if not too high 

 in price. He had five hives, one very large, the others all 

 small. It was in March, the weather was cold, the bees were 

 not flying. I went to the hives and tapped the boards. The 

 bees in the small hives answered " Zzzz ;" those in the large 

 hive said "Booooo," and one or two bees showed themselves at 

 once at the entrance. This settled the matter in my mind — I 

 knew which hive to buy. When the turn came of the bees to 

 be sold, they asked me, as a bee-man, to turn the hives over, so 

 the buyers could see what they looked like. I turned the large 

 hive, and a dozen inquisitive heads glanced in, but the bees soon 

 had every farmer routed away, and no one cared to look at the 

 other hives. 



I bought the large hive at $7.00, while the others were 

 sold to other parties at $5 or $6. I bought also a cow at that 

 sale, for which I paid $30.00. The colony, transferred into a 

 large movable-frame hive, filled every frame of the latter with 

 its brood-combs transferred, while the average of those box- 

 hives, ordinary size, would not fill over six frames. This hive 

 yielded, during that summer, 160 pounds of comb honey, 

 which, at that time, sold for '28 cents per pound, and its har- 

 vest not only paid for the cost of the hive, but also for the cow 

 I had bought at the same sale. The purchaser of the other 

 hives got next to nothing from them. 



It was with the above kind of observations that my atten- 

 tion was first attracted to large hives in comparison with 

 small ones, and all my later experiences confirmed this origi- 

 nal remark, although, at that time, I did not attempt to ex- 

 plain the cause of this disparity. 



While I was becoming convinced of the superiority of large 

 hives by the above-mentioned experiences, another bee-keeper 



— Jasper Hazen — was describing, in the American Bee Journal, 

 the hive and method which he employed. His hive was en- 

 larged so as to allow of placing surplus boxes on the sides as 

 well as on top of the brood-nest. As the honey-extractor was 

 then not yet in use, he did not enlarge the size of the brood- 

 nest, but would increase the harvesting capacity of his colony 

 by adding to it the population of another hive. Disposed as I 

 I was to take hold of anything that would tend to increase the 

 honey-yield, I hastened to make Quinby hives with side room 

 enough to give the bees six 5-pound boxes on each side of the 

 brood-nest (the section-box was not yet invented), six behind 

 it, and enough space on top to place, in all, over 150 pounds 

 of honey. As 1 knew that an experiment made on one hive or 

 two cannot be conclusive, I built 28 of these hives. We still 

 have 8 or 10 of them in our apiary. The result did not come 

 up to my expectations. The honey-bee has the instinct of 

 placing its honey above the brood, in a place where it may be 

 easily accessible during cold weather, and where the cluster 

 is placed directly between it and all intruders. 



My bees filled all the surplus boxes at the top, and the up- 

 per part of the side tiers ; but the lower tier of boxes was not 

 filled at all, except in one or two exceptional instances. The 

 side boxes had to be placed at the top, in order to get them filled 

 too. When the boxes were removed, these 28 hives had room 

 in the lower story for 14 Quinby frames, or about 150,000 

 cells, and they gave me an excellent opportunity to ascertain 

 the fecundity of the queens ; for, being unable to have them 

 filled with box honey, we placed combs in them, which were to 

 be run through the extractor. The queens, in these hives, had 

 room for 7,000 eggs daily. This number was too great, and 

 thus I had a chance to see to what capacity we could extend 

 our hives without overdoing the job. The conclusion was that 

 85,000 cells for the brood, or 8 Quinby frames for brood, and 

 two frames for supplies were about the right number. I thus 

 reduced my hives to 11 spaces, keeping one space for a dum- 

 my, and the other ten for frames. I have never had occasion 

 to regret this. 



If I were to start again, however, I would make the Quin- 

 by frame a little shallower, so as to be able to use 12-inch 

 boards for hive making. A half inch of difference would se- 

 cure this. We would also make the length of the top-bar the 

 same as that of the Langstroth hive, which would secure uni- 

 formity in the surplus cases with those already in use so far as 

 length is concerned. A hive of this size and style is now 

 largely in use in Switzerland, France, Spain, Italy, and a little 

 in Germany, under the name of "Modified Dadant" hive, be- 

 cause I introduced this style there, through the Revue Inter- 

 nationale d'Apiculture. Each comb, in a hive of this size, has 

 a surface of 193 square inches, and leaving two combs for the 

 supplies, pollen and honey, we have 81,800 cells, which, divi- 

 ded by 21— the number of days which it takes for bees to 

 hatch— gives the queen 3,900 cells per day. 



Many people will say that, with such a large hive, onecan- 

 not produce comb honey. I beg to say this is an error. I have 

 produced lots of comb honey with large hives, although it was 

 then in small boxes and in Adair section-frames ; but the 

 pound section is just as convenient as the Adair frame, and 

 much more so than the glass box of old, which was so objec- 

 tionable to the bees, owing to the inability of ventilating it in 

 hot weather. It is worthy of notice, however, that in bad 

 seasons, when the weather is such, during the Spring, that the 

 queen cannot make use of all her powers of fecundity, a small 

 hive would succeed better, if we could not reduce the space in 

 these large hives so as to fit the needs of the colony. This is 



