20 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



In reply to an inquiry, Mr. Taylor, Presi- 

 dent of the Union, said that there had been 

 complaints of adulteration brought before 

 the Union, but, from lack of evidence, there 

 had been no prosecutions. 



PKEPAKATIONS FOE WINTEE. 



Bro. Holterman, of the C. B. J. sent a 

 paper on the subject of preparing bees for 

 winter. Many of us, he said, were satisfied 

 if we could bring out a hive in the spring 

 containing life. If the hairs of the bees 

 would only turn grey with age, they would 

 tell a different story. There is, however, 

 another index : compare our crops from year 

 to year with those of our neighbors. There 

 should be early preparation, strong colonies 

 with bees in the full vigor of life and plenty 

 of wholesome stores. With the present 

 prices for bees in the spring, he did not be- 

 lieve that it was profitable to winter bees for 

 the purpose of selling them in the spring. 

 He would destroy the poorest in the fall. If 

 bees need feeding in the fall, he would not 

 feed direct to the needy stocks, but select the 

 strongest of those doomed to destruction, 

 feed to them, letting them store it in an extra 

 set of combs, and then give the filled combs 

 to the needy colonies. He thought that by 

 this method there would be less loss of 

 stores and vitality. He would contract the 

 brood chamber to suit the size of the colony. 

 The evening session" of the first day was 

 held at the home of the Review where baby 

 Fern insisted upon taking a part in proceed- 

 ings, and the members present were given 

 an opportunity to " sample the fair nectar 

 of the California orange blossoms," to quote 

 from one of the " resolutions " passed. 

 ^ The next meeting will be held in Detroit, 

 and, as Mr. Hunt is President, we may rest 

 assured that the arrangements will be all 

 that could be desired. 



EXTRT^OXED. 



Two Queens in One Hive Not Always a 

 Success. 

 This matter of having two queens in one 

 hive, with a division board of perforated 

 zinc between, or of a solid division board, 

 but the bees mixing at the entrance, has been 

 discussed quite a little the past season. 

 Nearly all the reports have been that of suc- 

 cess, and for that reason I feel like giving 



the following from the pen of Mr. Corneil 

 and published in Gleanings: 



" During the past two or three years the 

 British Bee Journal has been full of what 

 is, in England, called the ' Wells plan.' Mr. 

 Wells puts two colonies into the same hive in 

 the fall. They are separated by a wooden 

 division-board about three-sixteenths of an 

 inch thick, perforated with holes a little too 

 small to allow a bee to pass through. The 

 perforations are almost half an inch apart. 

 The bees use the same entrance, the mem- 

 bers of each family taking their own sides 

 of the division board. 



At the beginning of the honey flow, in the 

 following summer, queen-excluding zinc is 

 placed over the frames, and surplus cham- 

 bers are put on in which the bees of both col- 

 onies work in common, without fighting, 

 and, I believe, without the loss of many 

 queens. The amount of surplus obtained is 

 regarded as the product of one hive ; and 

 when comoared with the surplus stored by a 

 colony having only one^queen, is, as might be 

 expected, larger ; but I do not recollect see- 

 ing any evidence that it is more than twice 

 as large. 



As I use the closed-end Quinby frames, aii 

 I needed to give the plan a trial was the per- 

 forated division board ; so in the summer of 

 1892 I arranged eight colonies in four pairs 

 on the above plan. After leaving them about 

 a week, to get the same scent, I put sections 

 en two of the double stocks, and the other 

 two I ran for extracted honey. There was 

 no fighting, but in 12 days the perforations 

 in the division boards were mostly filled with 

 propolis. Those worked for comb honey 

 swarmed early, both colonies at the same 

 time, and then they sulked and gave me 

 little profit. I gave eight combs, lOxlG 

 inches, inside measure, to each of the col- 

 onies run for extracted honey, for a brood- 

 nest, and over the queen excluders I placed 

 two stories of 16 combs each, making 48 

 combs in all. These colonies seemed to do 

 pretty well for a while ; but on examination 

 I found three out of the four queens missing, 

 although there had been no swarming. 



Having taken the notion to run two fam- 

 ilies side by side, I started about 20 nuclei at 

 the side of as many populous colonies ; but 

 instead of using the perforated division 

 boards I used thin solid boards, having two 

 rows of perforated queen-excluding metal at 

 the bottom, a strip of the metal being tacked 

 on each side of the wood to keep the queens 

 from ' touching noses.' The queen-cells 

 hatched all right enough ; and as the bees 

 had their own entrance in a different direc 

 tion from tliat used by the bees of the main 

 hive, I expected to have the young queens 

 successfully fertilized ; but before the time 

 came, when they might be ext)ected to be 

 laying, they mysteriously disappeared — 

 killed, as I supposed, by the bees of the main 

 hive. 



My son and I decided, on finding our 

 queens all gone, that working bees on the 

 twin-hive principle would not pay us ; so we 

 separated our colonies, and have not tried it 

 since. 



