368 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



November 



ever, did Langstroth recommend a 

 smaller hive than 10 frames. His ex- 

 perience indicated that ample room 

 • ■(led. He wrote: "Many hives 

 • annul hold one-quarter of the hers. 

 comb and honey, which, in a good 

 season, may be found in my large 

 hives; while their owners wonder 

 that they obtain so little profit from 

 their lues. A good swarm of bees, 

 put, in a good season, into a diminu 

 tive hive, may be compared to a pow- 

 erful team of horses harnessed to a 

 baby wagon or a noble fall of water 

 wasted in turning a petty water- 

 wheel." 



These words ought to be inscribed 

 in capital letters on the wall of every 

 bee house, accompanied by this other 

 maxim, which Langstroth called 

 "((.til's Golden Rule: Keep your 

 colonies strong. If you cannot SUC 

 ceed in doing this, the more money 

 you invest in bees, the heavier will 

 be your losses ; while, if your colo- 

 nics are strong you will show that 

 you are a bee-master, as well as a 

 beekeeper, and may safely calculate 

 on generous returns from your in- 

 dustrious subjects." 



But neither Quinby nor Langstroth 

 gave any hint, in their writings, that 

 they had calculated the space needed 

 by a colony containing a prolific 

 queen. They suggested that much de- 

 pends on the locality and the season. 

 This is true. But there are first 

 principles to consider, if we wish to 

 get large returns, no matter what lo- 

 cality we live in. The prolificness of 

 the queen is the main criterion, for 

 the measure of hive size. 



When a farmer builds a barn he is 

 a poor manager if he does not con- 

 sider first the number of animals, 

 farm implements and farm produce. 



that he wishes to shelter in it. Why, 

 then, should the beekeeper neglect to 

 make the same calculation on the 

 necessary capacity of the brood- 

 chamber of his hives? 



The requisites of success in bee- 

 keeping are all in a strong force of 

 bees at the time of the honey crop. 

 As bees live only about 35 to 40 days, 

 on the average, during the summer, 

 the strong force of the colony must 

 be secured quickly and be ready -t 

 the height of the harvest. Should the 

 harvest last several months, it would 

 be necessary to continue with a great 

 force of bees until it ends. For that 

 purpose, the necessary room for 

 breeding must be unobstructed by 

 stores. So there must be sufficient 

 capacity for the breeding of the best 

 queens and ample room for surplus 

 This is one of the reasons why the 

 production of extracted honey is so 

 much greater than that of comb 

 honey. 



There are. of course, differences 

 between different breeds of bees as 

 to activity, strength and other quali- 

 ties of the worker bees. But given 

 the colonies of same breed, the most 

 successful will be the ones with the 

 best queens, if they have room in 

 plenty and a sufficiency of food. It 

 has been said verv truly that a queen 

 which is allowed to lay eggs at her 

 utmost capacity for months will wear 

 out or become unfertile in shorter 

 time than a queen whose prolificness 

 has not been put to the test. But a 

 prolific queen, well fed bv her bees, 

 as should be the case, will often lose 

 eggs if thev develop faster than she 

 can find cells for them. Queens have 

 been known to lose hundreds of eggs 

 when deprived of cell room for a 

 short time. Loss of eggs, when pre- 



I.. I. I. :j;.. i has bei omi I h 



paring for the crop, is loss of honey. 



If our queens wear out faster be- 

 cause of their ability to lay is put to 

 full extension, we need only to re- 

 place them oftener. Queens ' are 

 known to live from 3 to 4 years, oc- 

 casionally 5. If they rre given free 

 space and encouragement to lay, it 

 may be necessary to replace them 

 every two years. Some of our lead- 

 ers in beekeeping are already recom- 

 mending this, and a few even advise 

 the annual replacing of the queens. 

 So we might as well use their full 

 powers, and secure the profuse lay- 

 ing at the proper time, so as to have 

 the densest population, in the hive, 

 for the crop. 



If two colonies, side by side, with 

 the same opportunities, have queens 

 of so unequal fertility that one will 

 produce only half as much progeny 

 as the other, we must not accept for 

 granted the conclusion that the latter 

 will gather only twice as much honey 

 as the former. All tests and experi- 

 ments have indicated a much greater 

 difference in results, for the number 

 of bees required at home will be 

 about as great in the one case as in 

 the other and the force of field bees 

 of the stronger colony will be in ex- 

 cess of double that of the other. 

 So success lies, entirely, in the ut- 

 most prolificness of the queen at the 

 proper time. 



Although Langstroth, like Ber- 

 lepsch and others, had seen a queen 

 lay eggs at the rate of 6 per minute, 

 he hesitated to give the maximum 

 ability of a queen, suggesting be- 

 tween 2.000 and 3.000 eggs per day. 

 Quinby was a little bolder and placed 

 it at "frequently over 3,000." But is it 

 to be wondered that they should 

 have been timid in making bolder 

 assertions, when such men as Reau- 

 mur and others placed the active 

 egg-laying at about 200 eggs? Tn a 

 similar way. Langstroth hesitated in 

 denying entirely the popular fallacy 

 of the ability of the moths to destroy 

 healthy colonies of bees, though in 

 some parts of his work he gave us 

 nroofs that he knew thev could not 

 injure strong colonics, since he in- 

 augurated the luminous conViarison 

 of the impossibility of a healthy col- 

 ony of bees being killed by moths 

 versus a similar danger for a healthy 

 cow from carrion flies. 



\ prolific queen — and we should tol 

 prate no others — often averages over 

 3 s00 eegs per day in the active sea- 

 son. Some experimenters put it at 

 ,i" e\ en higher figure. 



Bv comparative exneriments. first 

 with x frame Quinby hives— Quinby*s 

 standard— then 10-frame Langstroth, 

 and t hiinby hives up to 16 frames. 

 Phas. Dadant reached the conclusion 

 that ° or 10 frames Quinby size, was 

 the best number. But he tried sev- 

 eral other styles, in addition to the 

 12x12 inch frames of the Debeau 

 V03 hive, Americanized, with 14 to 



16 ii aine in a hive. He mad. • . 

 nerimentS on hives with frames 1K\ 

 IX inches, looking like diminutive 

 barns; also frames shaped as near as 

 possible in the form of a cin I< bi 

 • ause he had noticed that the bees 

 preferably put their brood in circu- 

 lar shape. It may be interesting to 



