584 



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In nine days all queen-cells are removed 

 but one, so there will be no further 

 swarming. Managing in this way, the 

 colony is kept very strong during the 

 honey flow, to gather surplus honey, 

 and will go into winter quarters with a 

 young, vigorous queen. Where no in- 

 crease is desired, this is certainly a 

 good way to do. 



Giving Fraiues of Brood. 



There has been much rain of late, 

 and it is reasonable to expect a fair 

 flow of honey. In order to profit by it, 

 bees must be in good condition to 

 gather it. After the hurry of swarm- 

 ing is over, it is well to look after the 

 colonies that have cast swarms. I have 

 sometimes found such hives to be al- 

 most entirely filled with honey, and a 

 handful of bees with a laying queen, 

 and a small patch of brood. 1 would 

 take all the combs free from brood, and 

 extract them, confining the bees with 

 their brood to one side of their hive by 

 a division-board. Then I would open 

 a large colony, and take out a frame of 

 sealed brood, brush off the bees, and 

 give it to the little colony, placing one 

 of the empty combs in its" place. When 

 enough of the young bees had emerged 

 to cover the comb given to the small 

 colony, I would give it another in the 

 same way, and in about ten days it 

 would be a strong colony, fully equipped 

 for business. If it had been left alone, 

 it would have perished the following 

 winter, although surrounded with 

 honey, having too few bees to keep up 

 the necessary warmth. It is sometimes 

 also a benefit to large colonies to have 

 a frame which is partially filled with 

 brood removed, and an empty comb put 

 in its place, for I have seen every cell 

 in such filled with brood. But if a 

 frame filled with brood and honey is 

 removed from a strong colony, and an 

 empty frame put in its place, it will 

 almost surely be tilled with drone- 

 brood. 



Bees Clnsterliig Outside of tlie Hive. 



I do not desire more than one swarm 

 from a colony, but if I am very busy, 

 they get beyond my control. 'If I see 

 a " cast," I cut out the queen-cells and 

 return it, or a " maiden," which, by the 

 way, is a swarm that casts one. 



No bee-master allows his bees to 

 cluster on the outside of a hive for 

 want of storage room. And the farmer 

 who waits initil after harvest before he 

 gets time to put on surplus boxes, may 

 go without honey on his cakes another 

 winter. When the combs are built out 

 white, is a good time to put on recepta- 

 cles for honey. What kind these should 

 be, depends largely upon the way it is 

 to be disposed of. B^es will, no doubt, 

 build as much in starch boxes as in the 

 whitest sections, but there will be a 

 great difference in the returns, if it is 

 to be marketed. City trade demands 

 one and two pound sections. These 

 can be bought by the thousand cheaply, 

 and any child can put them together, 

 and the cases to hold them. York State 

 bee-keepeis put one-pound sections 1(U- 

 market into paper boxes, with highly 

 colored lithogmphs on them, but our 

 \\ estern consumers do not demand all 

 this " fuss and feathers." 



Peoria, Ills. 



The Prodigal— that Didn't 

 Return. 



Written for the American Bee Jou/mal 



BY EUGENE SECOIi. 



A silly bee got on a spree, 



Out in a field of clover. 

 " I'll drink," said she, " ray fill, te-he, 



And play the merry rover." 



" Now what's the use to be a goose, 



And all the time be alving, 

 Wlipn life is sliort and made for sport, 



And all we get's a living ?" 



" So I for one will have some fun, 



And live a life of pleasure. 

 Who said I ouulit to work for naught, 



And carry home the treasure ?" 



The day was fair. The balmy air 

 Played gently with the Bowers. 



By some strange spell, sweet hydromel 

 Distilled in nect'ious showers. 



She frisked about, now in, now out, 

 From every flow'ret drinliing ; 



Played in the sun till day was done 

 With no thouaht worth the thinking. 



When night drew nigh she heaved a sigh, 



Half sorry for her folly ; 

 But stubborn Pride, that purblind guide, 



Soon banished melancholy. 



Just underneath a plantain leaf 



Retired shu in the gloaming. 

 A nimble toad spied her abode ; 



A wink— she ceased her roaming. 

 Forest City, Iowa. 



GOOD REPORT. 



steady Honey-Flow — Queen-Ex. 

 eluding Honey-Boards. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 



BY H. O. KRTT8CHKK. 



I thought that I would throw a little 

 bright sunshine In among so many 

 dark reports. I am having a great 

 honey season ; not as much per colony 

 as is often reported, for I never look 

 for more than one-half as much— when 

 I get that I rejoice. We never look for 

 surplus till after July l,orbasswood 

 bloom, and this was after July 10 this 

 year. From then on it has been a con- 

 tinuous flow, not in torrents, but a 

 steady gain. 



My best colony has 140 one-pound 

 sections full ; and some are sealing 40, 

 50, and 70 pounds each. I tiered-up 

 some for extracting three full stories 

 high. They had brood in all the stories, 

 and some of them have a bushel basket 

 full of bees. I took off the boxes yes- 

 terday, and left them on the hives till 

 I went through the apiary, but no rob- 

 ber bees appeared. I could not coax 

 them to lick out the comb-carriers. 

 This will continue for ten days or two 

 weeks, if no frost appears. If I had 

 white clover I would be in a regular 

 "Eden." 



I have never used queen-excluding 

 honey-boards, but I have yet to find the 

 first bit of pollen or brood in the sec- 

 tions. Large hives is the remedy. I 

 had 38 colonies in good condition in the 

 middle of May, and I have increased 

 them to .58, and stocked the woods for 

 miles around with runaway swarms ; 

 but they will soon wish they had stayed 



at home, when Jack Frost lets the mer- 

 cury down out of sight. It looks now 

 as if I would have 3,000 pounds of sur- 

 plus, one -half of it comb honey in sec- 

 tions, and the rest extracted. 



My apiary is 18 miles away, and my 

 cranberries require a great deal of at- 

 tention, so that I cannot plan very 

 scientific management for the bees, but 

 I do the best I can for them. The re- 

 sult is perfectly satisfactory. 



Duester, Wis., Aug. 28, 1888. 



ON THE SCALES. 



Testing the Storing Qualities of 

 the Bees for Years. 



Written for the Farmer and Dairyman 



BY D. KAUFFMAN. 



I have had one of the best colonies in 

 my apiary on a scale during the last 

 six years, and in 1886 I marked down 

 the amount gained for the day every 

 night, and also kept a close watch on 

 the amount of surplus honey stored, 

 and from this I found that when bees 

 gain from one to three pounds, about 

 one-quarter of the gain is stored as 

 surplus honey, and when the gain is 

 from 3 to 8 pounds^ about one-half is 

 stored as surplus honey, and from the 

 record kept for this season, about two- 

 thirds was stored as surplus honey. 

 These experiments were all made for 

 extracted honey. 



But it seems to me that the rearing 

 of brood would not have anything to do 

 with the gain of a colony of bees, for if 

 the bees did not feed the brood it 

 would not gain in weight, and if they 

 take the feed from within the hive, it 

 would not get any heavier on account 

 of the brood ; but it would make a dif- 

 ference in the amount of surplus honey 

 stored, and when bees gain from 10 to 

 16 pounds per day they will lose from 

 8 to 5 pounds during the night : and 

 should the next two or three days be 

 cool or rainy, so that the bees could not 

 fly, the bees would lose about 3 pounds 

 in the first 24 hours, 2 pounds in the 

 second, 1 pound in the third, and J^ 

 pound in the fourth day. 



This loss is caused by the evappra- 

 tion of the honey, and I thiyk it is 

 nearly as great when bees gather honey 

 as it is when they do not, so that this 

 would make the actual weight carried 

 in by the bees during one day from 3 to 

 5 pounds more than the scales would 

 show by weighing the hive in the morn- 

 ing and again in the evening ; and I be- 

 lieve that when bees gain at such rates 

 the old ones wear out as fast as the 

 young ones come on, for they fill up 

 the brood- combs with honey as fast as 

 the young bees hatch, so that the queen 

 will not be able to find any empty cells 

 to put any eggs in, especially when 

 running for comb honey. 



I believe there were one-fourth less 

 flying, or working bees in my apiary, at 

 the close of the honey season than 

 there were when I first put the scales 

 under the hive on July 28, and three- 

 fourths less brood. 



1 think that it is a great help to have 

 a hive placed on a scale during the 



