692 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15 



tions at all, for that purpose. The average 

 of such set-apart colonies which have their 

 combs full of brood clear out to the bars of 

 the frames will be about one-third of the whole, 

 then thei'e will be about one-third of what is 

 left that will have one frame in the hive with 

 no brood in it. This frame is taken away, 

 and one of the boards hung in its place. 

 Another third will have brood in only eight 

 of the ten Langstroth frames I use in a hive, 

 and the two frames having no brood in them 

 are taken away and two of the dummies put 

 in their place. The other third will usually 

 not be as good as these last, owing to poor 

 wintering, poor queens, etc., and these may 

 have brood in only seven combs, or an oc- 

 casional one may have only six frames con- 

 taining brood. But, no matter what the num- 

 ber, all frames not having brood in them at 

 the extreme beginning of the harvest are 

 taken away, and dummies put in their places. 

 In this way each colony is prepared to work 

 in the sections in accord with the number of 

 frames occupied with brood, and will give 

 results in about the same proportion as to 

 the brood they have." 



"Suppose you find a colony with brood in 

 only five combs. What then?" 



"That depends vei-y largely upon what 

 my wants are, and what their condition as to 

 queen, etc. If I can not use them to better 

 advantage, and the queen is young and vig- 

 orous, and has been kept back through lack 

 of bees from poor wintering or something of 

 the kind then I run such for section honey, 

 using their five frames of Isrood and five dum- 

 mies. I would far rather allow a colony to 

 go into the honey harvest with only five 

 combs filled with brood, and five division- 

 boards, than to have the same colony with 

 five frames with brood and five empty combs, 

 or have these five combs of brood scattered 

 all about the hive in the ten combs. Herein 

 is something the apiarists of this country do 

 not put enough thought and study upon, to 

 say nothing of their every-day practice." 



DLL K&LPING 



IN THE SOUTHWEST 



The higher price of wax should have a ten- 

 dency toward less drone combs in the hives. 

 "Cut it out, melt into wax, and cash money 

 for it," seems to me worth thinking about. 

 But since foundation will be corresponding- 

 ly higher I wonder if it will be used in full 

 sheets to as great an extent. 



Abominable makeshifts of bottom-boards 

 are the fiimsy things put out nowadays by 

 the majority of hive-makers. A thorough 

 rial given these for several years has set me 

 tgainst any "flimsy" supplies. The old- 



style ^-inch bottom, well painted, is hard to 

 beat, and, if made of cheap but good materi- 

 al, is cheap enough for anybody. The fact 

 is, the lighter ones cost the same. While 1 

 have hundreds of heavy bottom-boards still 

 in use, for ten years or more, the one hun- 

 dred thin ones purchased four years ago are 

 rapidly going to pieces. 

 ^' 

 We are giving "splints" a trial this year 

 to stay foundation in frames, such as Dr. C. 

 C. Miller speaks of in his book, "Forty Years 

 Among the Bees," p. 88; but we are not hav- 

 ing the success with them we had hoped to 

 have. The bees seem very much inclined to 

 gnaw around the "splints," and, later, will 

 till the space with drone-cells. Why they 

 should do this we can't tell unless we had 

 the wax too hot when we waxed the ' ' splints, ' ' 

 and failed to get them well coated with wax, 

 writes L. B. Smith, of Rescue, Texas. There 

 may be several reasons for the trouble, but 

 I withhold mine until Dr. Miller tells us. 

 What was it, doctor? 



Swarming was over! How could I tell? 

 The apiary had not been visited for eight 

 months until April, when swarming should 

 have begun. There were drones by the 

 thousands, some at every hive. The stores in 

 the hives had run down, almost exhausted, 

 and just enough honey had been coming in 

 to stimulate the bees so that all the colonies 

 were in a rousing condition. More stores or 

 more honey from the fields would have meant 

 swai'ming; but, instead, it was given up. 

 This is how I told: Every colony in the api- 

 ary was driving out and killing ofl" its drones. 

 There will be a good deal of honey coming 

 in now; and all that is necessary is to pro- 

 vide room and prevent a crowded condition. 

 So, supers were given — shallow extracting- 

 supers with combs or full sheets of founda- 

 tion, which will be full (or nearly so) by the 

 main flow when the comb-honey supers are 

 slipped in. 



"The year 1906," says one of my corre- 

 spondents, "will be long remembered as a 

 year of an unusual amount of bloom of all 

 kinds, and yet it was one of the poorest years 

 I ever saw for bees in this locality. The 

 year 1907 has so far had the fewest flowers 

 since many years, caused from the excessive 

 drouth of last season, and the bees seem to 

 be doing even better than at this date last 

 year. We wonder if we shall be surprised 

 with a bountiful honey crop in 1907." 



Such are some of the conditions that have 

 to be surmounted in our predictions for the 

 season in this country. There may and there 

 may not be a good crop. The season is yet 

 too long for anybody to be able to tell at this 

 time, in Southwest Texas a good deal of 

 honey has been obtained this spring in a 

 number of localities, and prospects are fa- 

 vorable. Other portions of the State have 

 not had any surplus honey yet, but general- 

 ly the bees are in good condition for the sea- 

 son. The April mesquite flow came in March 

 here — much too early for the strength of the 



