1919 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



27 



the queen with one frame of brood, leave the 

 queen with one frame of brood in the old hive 

 and take away ail the rest of the brood with 

 adhering bees, introducing the new queen to 

 these latter bees. In this way the introduction 

 of the queen will be safer, for the field bees 

 will all rtturn to the old queen, and it is the 

 old bees chiefly that make trouble when a new- 

 queen is introduced. There will also be less 

 danger of swarming. 



It is quite possible that you will reply, "Yes, 

 but I would like to have the new queen with 

 the main colony, so that there would be a big- 

 ger harvest." Believe me, the harvest c*epends 

 chiefly on the force of bees left iy the old 

 queen, and the bees that will come from the 

 brood she has left. In a good season, espe- 

 cially if you have a fall flow, you may get 

 surplus from both divisions, .vhex-a;, it jou 

 take away the queen with 0112 brood, y-Jii can 

 hardly expect any surplus from tuis ofishoot. 



(In addition, a new coloniy, made with only 

 one frame of brood and bees, with the old 

 queen, and put on a new spot, may be too 

 weak. At the same time, the colony from 

 which this one brood and queen have been 

 taken may remain strong enough to prepare 

 queen-cells and swarm with the new queen in- 

 troduced to it. So the method advised by Dr. 

 Miller is the better method, by all means, if 

 no natural swarming is wanted. — Editor.) 



13. Six and 



14. About 6 



15. Sure. 



quarter inches in depth, 

 iches, likely. 



Miscellaneous 



1. What caused my bees to swarm out and 

 then return and carry out the queen? 



2. I intend to transfer my bees in Jumbo 

 hives. Can I produce comb honey with this 

 hive? Which would be the better, the 8 or 

 10-frame? 



3. I have heard that bees will not stay in a 

 home-made hive unless it is washed with salt 

 and water. Can you tell me if this is true? 



4. Do you think I can buy nuclei on Jumbo 

 frames? 



5. Would a 3-pound package of bees with 

 queen do well if put in a Jumbo hive with 

 frames of foundation? 



6. Do untested queens prove successful? 



7- What do queen breeders mean by the 

 term (selected) tested queens? 



8. How long does it take a virgin before she 

 is a laying queen? 



9. What should be the distance between I )t- 

 tom-board and frames and between top of 

 frames and super? 



10. How long will bees live without a 

 queen? 



11. Will there be a big demand for comb 

 honey the coming season? 



12. Will the pound-package men have as 

 much trouble filling orders the coming season 

 as they had last year? 



13. What is the size of the Dadant shallow 

 extracting frames? 



14. What depth of shallow extracting frames 

 would prove the uest on Jumbo hives? 



15. Will bees chew cardboard if used in the 

 hive as a division board? ILLINOIS. 



Answers. — 1. It is quite possible it was a 

 second swarm, having two or more young 

 queens. Such swarms not infrequently return 

 to the hive, perhaps because the chosen queen 

 has been fertilized and then the superfluous 

 queens are killed and carried out. 



2. Yes, and perhaps the larger hive may be 

 better. 



3. That's all bosh. 



4. Doubtful. 



5. Yes, of course, with a good season. 



6. The great majority of them do; but of 

 course some are unsatisfactory. 



7. It's the ones they pick out as being better 

 than the average, in their opinion. 



8. She is likely to be laying when S or 10 

 days old, but sometimes later. 



9. About 2i and J4 inch, respectively. 



10. In the working season such a colony will 

 last something over two months. 



11. I don't know, but expect a good de- 

 mand for both comb and extracted. 



12. I don't think so. 



Pound Packages 



1. What can I do to keep the little worms or 

 maggots out of comb honey after it is taken 

 off the hive and put away for winter? I put 

 some up in pound cartons and when I went to 

 use it, it was full of worms. 



2. Can I send south and get pound pack- 

 ages of bees with queen ? When they come 

 can I go to my strong swarms, take out frame 

 of brood and give it to them? Will they be 

 strong enough to take care of them? Or 

 would it pay better to get 2-pound packages? 



3. Will it weaken the swarms I take the 

 brood from enough to affect their honey pro- 

 duction? 



4. I requeened some black bees with Italian 

 queens about September 20. I looked about 

 three weeks later to see if they accepted their 

 queens. I found every cell full of honey or 

 beebread, but could not find the queens. Do 

 you think it was too late for them to lay eggs 

 this fall? 



5. If the queens are dead will they go 

 through the winter. Can I requeen in the 

 spring? 



6. Do you think a few cells of American 

 foulbrood will disappear in a colony of bees 

 by keeping it strong with a prolific queen? 



NEBRASKA. 

 Answers. — 1. The best thing is to have Ital- 

 ian bees that will keep the moth at bay. Even 

 with them it is possible that there may be 

 some trouble with "worms" in comb honey, in 

 which case you should fumigate the combs be- 

 fore the little pests come to good size, say two 

 weeks after the combs are taken from the 

 hive. You can fumigate with burning sulfur, 

 in which case the eggs of the moth will be 

 unharmed, and you must fumigate again when 

 they have hatched, say two weeks later. If 

 you fumigate with carbon disulfide no second 

 fumigation will be needed, as eggs and all will 

 be killed. 



2. You may do very well with a one-pouni 

 package, but a larger package with more combs 

 will be better on the whole. 



3. Yes, taking away brood from a colony 

 will lessen its yield, but the gain may be more 

 than the loss. 



4. It may have been; it is impossible to say. 



5. Yes; but a queenless colony is not likely 

 to winter so well as one which has a queen. 



6. No; instead of disappearing it will in- 



Uniting 



This is not a good beekeeping locality, ana 

 I am not a good beekeeper. I am looking for 

 a system as near automatic as possible, that 

 will yield about 10 pounds of chunk honey per 

 colony in an average year. I think I could get 

 some honey by the old method of smothering 

 half the colonies every fall and then dividing 

 the remainder every spring, as they seem to 

 get enough to winter even when too weak to 

 draw out all the combs. Do you think it 

 would be practicable to divide a colony in 

 spring and put one-half with the old queen in 

 another hive on tcp of the old one, with a 

 3-inch double screened hole in the center of 

 cover of lower hive, so that the two hive 

 scents would remain similar; then kill the top 

 queen in the fall and take all the honey that 

 wouldn't go in the lower hive? I suppose it 

 wouldn't do to unite them without killing one 

 queen, even though she happened to be hard 

 to find. MASSACHUSETTS. 



Answeb. — Your scheme might work to your 

 satisfaction sometimes, and sometimes not. 

 There would be no trouble uniting in the fall, 

 for you could unite without finding either 

 queen, leaving to the bees or the queens them- 

 selves which should be left. But there might 

 be trouble galore long before fall. I suppose 

 you are counting that when you put the queen 

 in the upper story the bees will rear another 

 queen in the lower story. Very likely; and 

 when the first queen emerges the bees may 

 decide that that is a good time to swarm, the 

 very thing you are trying to avoid. Why not 

 vary the plan, making it the Demaree plan? 



When the season has advanced so that you 

 think there may begin to be danger of swarm- 

 ing, put all but one brood in an upper story, 

 leaving the queen with the one brood in the 

 lower story, vacancies being filled out with 

 drawn combs or full sheets of foundation, and 

 a queen-excluder between the two stories. A 

 week or ten days later kill all cells in the 

 upper story. Then you will be saved all trou- 

 ble of uniting in the fall, and have only honey 

 above the excluder. Of course this honey will 

 be in old combs, but it would be in your pro- 

 posed plan. The best thing will be to extract 

 it, and you should not be satisfied with any 

 such amount as 10 pounds per colony. 



Moving Bees 



I have 60 colonies in 10-frame, dovetailed 

 hives, and I am going to have them moved 700 

 miles by freight. Will you please tell me what 

 is the best way to pack them? 



ILLINOIS. 



Answer. — In the limited space allowed I 

 cannot go into very full particulars, but will 

 say in general terms that you must plan so 

 that the hives shall not be allowed to move 

 about; that they shall be placed so that the 

 frames of the hive shall run 'parallel with the 

 rails of the road, and that plenty of ventila- 

 tion must be allowed if weather should be 

 warm, and if a very hot spell should occur 

 water must be sprinkled upon the bees. 



A Start in Beekeeping 



I have always been afraid of bees. But a 

 swarm took possession of some empty space 

 under the floor of my chicken house this sum- 

 mer and I had to do something. After much 

 reading, I made a hive according to directions 

 and said to the bees what Sir Nigel said to the 

 yellow horse: "I am your man and you are 

 my bees." 



I puffed a bit of smoke at them and in they 

 went, but sooner than I could say it they came 

 out again in force, so I put down the smoker 

 and pried up the floor. That broke the combs 

 loose from the floor boards and left them on 

 the ground, and the bees sticking to their 

 combs for dear life. They let me lift them up 

 off the ground, one piece of comb at a time, 

 and put them in the hive. 



It was only a little while till I had them so 

 tame I could go out and lift off the cover and 

 tickle their little whiskers, or whatever you 

 call it, and they seem to be as glad to see 

 me as to see their queen. 



But, doctor, how should a new fellow like 

 me go about it to build up an apiary? 



COLORADO. 



Answer. — That question nearly takes my 

 breath away. One way is to serve an appren- 

 ticeship of seven years or less with some good 

 beekeeper. Another way, one that will prob- 

 ably suit you better, is to spend a part of your 

 time this winter studying a good textbook on 

 bees, such as Dadant's Langstroth, and then 

 be ready next spring to go at the matter un- 

 derstandingly. Now that's a very general 

 answer, isn't it? Well, your question is a very 

 general question. In the meantime it will be 

 no harm for you to get the book containing 

 my answers to 1,000 beekeeping questions, and 

 when you find some particular question arise 

 that does not seem answered by any book you 

 have, send that question to me and I'll do my 

 best to answer it in this department. That's 

 just what this department is for. 



Carniolans or Italians — Kind of Hive 



1. Would I get better results in raising a 

 nucleus colony with a Carniolan queen than 

 I would with an Italian? My beebooks say 

 that Carniolans rear large quantities of brood. 



2. What kind of hives would you use 

 (double-walled or single) to winter bees out of 

 doors in northern Indiana? 



3. What do you think about A. G. Wood- 

 man's Protection Hive? INDIANA. 



Answers. — 1. You would probably find not 

 much difference, and I would expect as good 

 results from Italians. 



