THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



101 



tinually ou the look out for pointers. We 

 may not approve of all the changes suggest- 

 ed, but no friend need withold his ideas 

 fearing they will receive no consideration. 



In the very^nature of things we can't all 

 think alike. If we did, there would be no use 

 for discussions. The very word ^'Review,'' 

 in one sense, implies discussion, and in the 

 columns of the Review all can meet upon 

 equal grounds — " a fair tight and no favor," 

 if the expression is allowable. But, in our 

 mental conflicts, let's have no hardness — 

 unless it be in the arguments used. 



PREVENTING AFTEK-SWAEMING BY THE 

 HEDDON METHOD. 



In the April issue, Mr. Doolittle said that 

 he had had trouble when practicing the 

 Heddon method of preventing after-swarm- 

 ing, by the bees becoming "sulky" and 

 sticking to the hive after its removal, which 

 resulted in after-swarmmg. ' 



We always move the hive to a new location 

 in the middle of a pleasant day when the 

 majority of the honey gatherers are a-field 

 and don't know that the hive is being mov- 

 ed, nor can they find it upon their return. 



Another point. With our light, readily 

 movable hives, we can so easily, softly and 

 quietly pick up a colony and place it upon a 

 new stand, that the bees will scarcely real- 

 ize that they have been moved. We have 

 often stood and watched a colony after its 

 removal, and seen the workers come shoot- 

 ing out of the entrance, then up and away 

 with scarcely a backward glance at the old 

 home in its new location. Bees that leave 

 in this manner must certainly return to the 

 old location. It is not until the hive has 

 been moved a day or two that we begin to 

 see bees returning to it. We have often ex- 

 amined a colony the next day after its re- 

 moval, and found nearly all the bees less 

 than a week old — soft, downy, fuzzy. 



When the queens hatch under these con- 

 ditions, there is no swarming ; and the only 

 difliculty in securing these conditions occurs 

 when a sort of swarming mania pervades the 

 apiary : when, instead of waiting until one or 

 more queen cells are sealed, colonies will 

 sometimes swarm even before queen cells 

 are started, and often when they are only 

 nicely started. In such cases the queens 

 may not begin hatching until several days 

 after the colony has been moved, when 

 it often happens that enough bees will have 



hatched to cause swarming. When there is 

 danger of trouble from this source, we know 

 of no better plan than to place an Alley 

 queen trap at the entrance of each hive when 

 given a new location. Then when a swarm 

 does issue, remove all queen cells, and return 

 the swarm with the queen that is in the 

 trap. We think it far preferable to thus 

 treat the occasional colony that, under this 

 management, sends out an after-swarm, 

 than to be obliged to remove the brood 

 combs from ei-ery colony that swarms, and 

 shake off part of the bees, and then intro- 

 duce a virgin queen. The manager of a 

 large apiary must employ simple, expedi- 

 tious methods. 



THE QUEEN KESTBIOTOK. 



C. W. Dayton, of Bradford, Iowa, is out 

 with a neatly printed little book, called The 

 Queen Restvictor. Price twenty-flve cents. 

 It is devoted wholly to a description of a de- 

 vice for restricting the queen to a certain 

 number of combs, and to the advantages 

 that will be enjoyed if the instructions, as 

 laid down, are followed. 



Perforated zinc at the bottoms, ends, tops 

 and sides of any number of brood frames — 

 from two to eight — confines the queen to the 

 combs enclosed. In fact, it is, practically, a 

 great queen cage of perforated metal with 

 combs inside it, and the whole hung inside a 

 hive of bees. Of course, the laying of the 

 queen is restricted to the combs enclosed. 

 The whole cage and its contents can be in- 

 verted bodily. The idea is quite ingenious ; 

 but the device for carrying it out is quite 

 expensive — sixty-five cents, exclusive of the 

 hive and frames : and, as we look at it, it is 

 simply using quite a little machinery in 

 order to contract the brood nest in such a 

 manner that wide frames filled with sections, 

 or else combs for extracting, may be used in 

 the brood nest at the sides of the restrictor. 

 How much simpler and easier is contraction 

 with a horizontally divisible brood chamber. 

 Simply take away one section, or leave both 

 in place, for that matter, but slip a queen- 

 excluding honey-board between them, and 

 we have "contraction and exclusion." 



We have a friendly feeling for the author 

 of this little book, and think many of the 

 ideas advanced are excellent, but candor 

 compels us to say that, even with deep 

 frames, we think we should prefer to con- 

 tract by using dummies ; we certainly 

 should if raising comb honey. 



