1918 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



353 



Packing — Bees Dying on Snow — Old 

 Comb 



1. Our hive covers are 6 inches deep. Will 

 a gunny sack filled with wheat straw, placed 

 in the cover make a good packing above the 

 frames, absorbing the moisture, etc? 



2. May the sack of straw be allowed to rest 

 directly on the top-bars? 



3. Would it be well to place paper on top of 

 the sack? 



4. Last winter a number of bees would come 

 out of the hives, carrying dead bees; alighting 

 mi the snow, they would become numbed and 

 freeze. Were the hives too warmly packed, or 

 should the snow have been cleared away? 



5. When bees begin to tear down old comb 

 and build in new in patches, should the old 

 comb be replaced with foundation? 



6. Do the bees use the old wax from such 

 combs over again? 



MISSOURI. 

 Answers. — 1. Yes; leaves would be much 

 better. 



2. It would do all right, except that the bees 

 will gnaw holes in the sack. So there should 

 be something for the bag to rest on in the 

 way of a thin board covering, but not entirely 

 close, or else some kind of cloth. 



3. It would not make such a great differ- 

 ence, but still might be of use. Paper is good 

 to stop air currents. 



4. Sweeping the snow away for a few feet, 

 or covering it with straw or something else 

 would have been good. Even tramping the 

 snow would help, as it is the softness of the 

 snow that makes the trouble, the bees sinking 

 down into it. 



5. I don't know that be« ever tear down 

 comb merely because it is old, but because it 

 is objectionable in some way. Anyway, if only 

 a small spot appears objectionable, it may be 

 patched with foundation, or, still better, with 

 drawn-out comb. If the whole comb is bad, as 

 it may be when left for a long time out of 

 the care of the bees, then it should be replaced 

 with a new frame of comb or foundation. 



G. Not as a rule, although I'm not sure but 

 they sometimes use it in proo. 'is. 



Royal Jelly — Transferring 



1. What is royal jelly and what color it it? 



2. Where is royal jelly found? 



3. How much is needed to rear a queen? 



4. What is best to do, let bees swarm, or use 

 Alley trap to keep them from swarming? 



5. I had to transfer some bees from a box- 

 hive; I used the drumming plan, and, to my 

 surprise, they wouldn't drum out at all. I will 

 tell you how I went about it, and my question 

 is, tell me where I made my mistake? I put 

 an empty box on top of the old box-hive, but 

 first I smoked them good and turned it upside 

 down, then I started drumming, and I drum- 

 med about an hour; did not drum a bee out of 

 it. 



6. After transferring I found it necessary to 

 feed them. I fed with a division-board feeder. 

 Soon after I fed them they made quite a noise 

 around the front of the hive. There was no 

 robbing or fighting; but why did they make 

 that noise? 



7. If bees are left out of doors in winter 

 should they have an extra cover over them? 



S. Should each hive have a cloth cover be- 

 tween the frames and top, or does it make any 

 difference? 



9. Which pays the best, extracted or comb 



10. Do 



know 



: to be 

 ;istency 



'here I could get son 

 3u do, give the addrej 

 ILLINOIS, 

 the food given to tl 

 reared as queens, and 

 looks much like thi> 



vent swarming; only catches the queen when 

 the bees swarm. Then the swarm returns, 

 only to swarm again if nothing is done. 



5. Likely you did not drum hard enough. 

 You must drum hard enough so the bees will 

 say, "This place is going all to pieces; better 

 we climb out as soon as possible." 



8. It was because the bees were excited. 



7. Yes- 



8. Many use no such cloth, but have only a 

 bee-space between the top-bars and the cover. 



9. Extracted, generally speaking. 



10. Try any nurseryman. 



2. In queen-cells. 



:j. I don't know. In a queen-cell about to 

 be sealed you will find as much as the size of 

 a pea; but it is not all used by the larva, for 

 when the young queen emerges from the 

 queen-cell you will find quite a portion of it 

 left in the cell, dried into a stiff jelly, quite a 

 bit darker than when fresh. 



4. For you it will probably be better to let 

 them swarm. The Alley trap does not pre- 



St range Behavior 



I have had a peculiar experience with an 

 Italian queen. She was with 2 pounds of bees 

 and she soon had a fair colony, but one day I 

 noticed quite an uproar among my bees. I 

 soon saw quite a lot of bees entering another 

 hive, and bees all around fighting, and many 

 dead. I stopped the entrance. I soon saw a 

 bunch of bees near the entrance of the hive, 

 and when I brushed them apart the queen 

 was there. I picked her up and put her in 

 her own hive and put a queen-cage over the 

 entrance. A short time after that I noticed 

 quite a disturbance around another hive and 

 noticed the queen with almost all of her 

 colony near the entrance of that hive, which 

 was a double hive, and not knowing it was the 

 same queen, I took off the upper hive and set 

 it aside and put her in the lower hive. I soon 

 discovered she was the same old queen. I 

 then took the hive and brood she left and put 

 it in the hive she was in. I would like to 

 know what was the cause of the trouble. She 

 had plenty of brood and of honey. 



IOWA. 



If I had been on the spot to see the whole 

 performance, maybe I could have told what 

 was the trouble, and maybe I couldn't. It 

 looks a little like regular swarming, the bees 

 foolishly trying to enter other hives. Some- 

 times they do that way. 



Transferring Bees in Georgia 



By F. M. Baldwin. 



Mr. J. O. Hallman, who was with 

 J. J. Wilder of Cordele, Ga., last sea- 

 son, is setting up for himself. He 

 uses 8-frame hives and runs for 

 chunk honey. Cypress dressed on 

 both sides is bought by the car load 

 and cut on a small power saw as he 

 has time and his needs require. 



His yards are scattered over a 

 radius of 25 miles and he uses a one- 

 ton Maxfer truck in visiting them. 

 Bees were bought where he could 

 find them in reach of his home yard. 

 Many of them were in old-fashioned 

 gums, but he also found a goodly 

 number in L. hives at a reasonable 

 price. He has over 200 colonies. 



The roads are fairly good, only one 

 yard being off the main thoroughfare. 

 This yard is the farthest to which he 

 has to go, being a few miles beyond 

 Rhine, on the Seaboard railway. He 

 has only about two miles of bad road 

 in this journey. 



There were 35 gums in the home 

 yard, four of which swarmed and 

 were hived on full sheets of founda- 

 tion in 8-frame Langstroths. Most 

 of these old gums are made of inch 

 and a quarter lumber, the outside 

 measure being 12x18^ and 12 inches 

 deep. They are an attempt at a 

 movable frame. Cleats are fastened 

 on the inside of the ends of the box 

 and five frames made of plastering 

 lath are hung on them. No attempt 

 is made to keep the combs straight. 

 But in the super, which is six inches 

 deep, full sheets of foundation are 

 fastened in the five lath frames, the 



plan being to have straight combs 

 for the chunk honey trade of the 

 neighborhood. The space between 

 the top-bar of the hive and the bot- 

 tom-bar of the super is rather more 

 than an inch and is usually full of 

 brace combs when the super is re- 

 moved. I believe Mr. Hallman bought 

 30 of these and five of the long, slim 

 gum, so dear to the hearts of our 

 fathers. These have been brought to 

 his home and are about 50 feet west 

 of the factory, in a long, straight row 

 near the fence that separates this 

 yard from the house. 



The gums are on the ground and a 

 one-story L. hive is set on top. This 

 is filled with foundation wired in the 

 frames. If there was any honey in 

 the super it was put on top of the 

 new hive as a bait to draw the bees 

 into the new hive. When there 

 was no old super with surplus 

 left over from last fall a bait comb 

 was used as soon as it could be 

 spared from a hive in which the bees 

 had been industrious enough to start 

 work above the brood-chamber. 



No attempt will be made to confine 

 the queen to the new brood-chamber. 

 She will be allowed the freedom of 

 the whole hive. About the first of 

 October, or as soon thereafter as 

 brood rearing is reduced to the mini- 

 mum, the old box is to be taken from 

 under the new hive and torn to 

 pieces; whatever honey and wax may 

 be found in it will be cared for and 

 the bees will then be in modern 

 hives. Of course, they will be given 

 a good smoking from the bottom to 

 drive the queen up if she is down be- 

 low before the bottom is disconnect- 

 ed from the top. Mr. Hallman used 

 this method of transferring when he 

 was with that most extensive of all 

 our beekeepers, our friend J. J. 

 Wilder, of Cordele, who has 5,000 

 colonies in some 75 yards of south- 

 ern Georgia and northern Florida. 

 Most of Mr. Hallman's bees are the 

 black kind, and he does not plan to 

 Italianize them at present. They are 

 industrious and doing well. Two 

 hives are worth careful attention. 

 The treatment in their case is 

 different. They have been turned 

 down on the side, a 3-inch strip re- 

 moved from the upper side to make 

 a good-sized opening, and an 8- 

 frame L body set over the opening. 

 Then a board is nailed on the bot- 

 tom to close up that big open space, 

 leaving as much entrance as may 

 seem desirable. 



The above plan cuts out a lot of 

 muss and leaves the actual work of 

 transferring largely to the bees them- 

 selves. 



Perhaps a word as to the probable 

 flow at Helena and through this sec- 

 tion of South Georgia may be in or- 

 der. Our work begins with maple 

 in January. Fruit bloom and china- 

 berry carry us to poplar in March 

 and April." Gallberry begins before 

 poplar ends. In the summer we ex- 

 pect nectar from cotton and in Oc- 

 tober and late September the fields 

 are full of what I think is burr- 

 clover. Just what the average crop 

 in the neighborhood will be under 

 modern management is a matter of 

 guess, as no one has tried it out. 



