1919 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



277 



Send Questions either to the office of the American Bee Journal or direct to 



Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, Ilv 



He doei not answer bee-keening questions by mall. 



Queen Excluder — Two or Three Eggs 

 in One Cell 



On May 17 I put an extracting super with 

 four drawn combs and four frames with foun- 

 dation over wire excluder, on what I thought 

 my best colony. 



May IS bees had taken possession of super. 



May 19 I found one comb, a drawn comb 

 rilled ' with eggs — two and three eggs in the 

 same cell — yet hardly any cell skipped. Surely 

 a fertile worker at her business, and a queen- 

 Jess colony, I thought, and the colony must be 

 broken up. Yesterday, May 21, I examined 

 the brood-chamber. I found it full of worker 

 bee-brood, a drone-cell here and there, eight 

 of the ten frames covered with bees — no queen, 

 however, to be found. I was mystified for a 

 while. Then I took out that comb of the ex- 

 tracting super — and here along comes the 

 queen, and very unconcerned, indeed. 



The wire excluder shows no apparent de- 

 fect. I removed the excluder to allow the 

 queen to go to the brood-chamber unhampered 

 —which she did almost at once. I put the 

 super on without excluder, thinking what the 

 queen did once she might do again, and in her 

 efforts to get through the excluder harm may 



1. What shall I do in regard to that super? 



2. Shall I forgive the queen this time? 



3. Why did the oueen lay several eggs in 

 the same cell? 



An answer through the American Bee Jour- 

 nal will be appreciated. MINNESOTA. 



Answers. — 1. A little hard to say. The 

 question arises whether the queen was at fault 

 or the excluder. It may be that there was 

 some defective spot in the excluder through 

 which the queen might pass, although close ex- 

 amination might not discover it, in which case 

 if you should return the super over the excluder, 

 the queen might happen not to hit the same 

 spot again. On the other hand, the excluder 

 might have been perfect and the queen might 

 have an undersized thorax, in which case she 

 would be pretty certain to go through the ex- 

 cluder again. Two eggs in a cell, while there 

 were no doubt plenty of empty cells, is some- 

 what against ' her, although I have known 

 queens that for a time did bad work in having 

 a plurality of eggs in a cell, and afterward 

 conducted themselves with entire propriety. 

 But another count against her is that in the 

 sample which you sent at least two eggs are on 

 the sides of the cells, one of them being clear 

 out of the mouth of the cell. If she keeps 

 up too much of tl.-t sort of thing, she can 

 hardly be forgiven. 



3. I do not know. As I have already said, 

 a good queen may sometimes do ihis for a 

 time, but if she does much of it, and espe- 

 cially if she does not lay eggs in the bottom of 

 the cell, I would fear she is a bad queen, with- 

 out being able to say exactly why she does such 

 things. 



Setting Swarms — Queen Excluders, 

 Etc. 



1. On the front page of the American Bee 

 Journal are the pictures of two men, one is that 

 of Rev. Langstroth, the inventor of the mov- 

 able-frame hive; who is the other? 



2. On page 24 of the American Bee Journal 

 of January, 1918, "Virginian" takes issue with 

 Mr. Frank C. Pellett concerning the custom of 

 some people making a noise when the bees 

 swarm in order to get them to settle. Last sea- 

 son I had my bees under a big Chinaberry tree 

 and a swarm settled on one of its branches 

 about 10 feet from the ground. I shook them 

 down 3 or 4 times after placing a hive under 

 the spot where they were settled, but the bees 



always took wing and returned to the same 

 branch. Then my wife took an old cow-bell and 

 went to a nearby peach tree and rang it while 

 1 vehemently and continuously shook the 

 branch, and the bees promptly settled on that 

 peach tree, and were hived without further 

 trouble. What is your opinion of this matter? 



3. Is it possible for a virgin oueen to go 

 through a queen-excluder TEXAS. 



Answers. — 1. It is Charles Dadant, the 

 father of C. P. Dadant, one of the ablest bee- 

 keepers of a former generation, who probably 

 did more than any other man to popularize 

 movable-comb hives in France, where he was 

 better known than in America where he lived. 



2. Are you sure it was a fair thing for you 

 to butt in and not let the cowbell have a chance 

 to do its work alone? Seriously, there is no 

 certainty at all that the cowbell had anything 

 to do with it, and at that moment it is just pos- 

 sible that the bees took it into their heads that 

 they would change their location, cowbell or no 

 cowbell. 



3. Yes, such things have happened, either be- 

 cause the excluder was faulty or because the 

 queen was abnormally small. But I suppose 

 the same queen would go through just as well 

 after becoming a laying queen. The abdomen 

 of a laying queen is much larger than the ab- 

 domen of a virgin. It is not the abdomen, but 

 the thorax that prevents the queen going 

 through the excluder, and I think the thorax 

 of a laying queen is no larger than it was 

 while she was a virgin. 



Feeding — Robbing 



1. If bees have plenty of stores, would feed- 

 ing stimulate brood-rearing? 



2. Suggest a way of keeping combs of honey 

 and empty combs free of moths. If they are 

 placed in a vessel that a bee-moth can't enter, 

 will I have them anyhow? 



3. In my locality the honey-flow is scant for 

 60 days after swarming time. Should I feed 

 my new syarms till conditions improve? 



4. How can I stop robbing? 

 Answers.— 1. Generally not. With plenty of 



stores in the hive, so long as at least a little 

 is coming from outside, brood-rearing will con- 

 tinue, and no amount of feeding you do will 

 make any difference. If, however, an absolute 

 dearth continues so long that the queen stops 

 laying entirely, then feeding is of the utmost 

 importance. In most places, however, that sort 

 of thing never happens, and you can put it 

 down as a pretty good rule that stimulative 

 feeding and spreading brood are things best 

 let alone. 



2. If an empty comb or comb containing 

 honey is entirely free from the bee-moth and 

 its eggs or larva:, then if you put it in a moth- 

 tight place, it is safe. Indeed, such a comb is 

 almost safe in any room in an ordinary 

 dwelling without being moth-tight. Unfortu- 

 nately, in nearly every case when a comb of 

 honey or a section is taken from a hive, it 

 contains at least the eggs of the bee-moth, 

 and under favorable conditions those eggs will 

 hatch. You will see that a comb containing 

 eggs will not be helped by putting in a moth- 

 tight place. Your recourse in such a case is 

 to brimstone the larva: or to use carbon disul- 

 fide, which last will destroy both larva: and 

 eggs. 



3. The old rule was always to feed the 

 swarm for a few days. I do not suppose it is 



really necessary, but at least It can do no 

 harm, and if the bees cannot at the time get 

 honey outside, it may do good. 



4. Do not let it get started. In nearly every 

 case of robbing the beekeeper is at fault, hav- 

 ing done some fool thing to start the robbing, 

 such as leaving bits of honey exposed. Vari- 

 ous ways of stopping robbing have been used, 

 one of the best being to pile hay or straw 

 around the hive and keeping it thoroughly wet 

 down with water. The robbers don't like to go 

 through the wet stuff, and it does no harm to 

 the bees of the colony. 



Tin for Honey — Introducing Virgin 



1. Is a tin tank good for extracted honey? 



2. How long can I let honey stand in a tin 

 tank without doing harm to the honey? 



3. If I put all but one frame of brood in a 

 hive-body above an excluder, leaving the other 

 brood and the queen below, and fill the space 

 in the lower body with frames of foundation 

 and let them stand for seven aays, and then 

 set the upper body in a new place, could I 

 safely introduce a virgin into this hive as soon 

 as most of the old bees returned to their old 

 stand? MINNESOTA. 



Answers. — 1. Yes. 



2. I don't know why it shouldn't stand all 

 right for months if the surface of tin is per- 

 fect. 



3. Yes; after the old bees have all returned 

 to the old location almost any queen may be 

 easily introduced. There might, however, be 

 trouble with a virgin many days old. The 

 easiest of all queens to introduce is a virgin 

 less than a day old. 



Swarms Leaving 



About 6 o'clock one morning last week a 

 S'varm of my bees came out and went into a 

 hive close by that was weak. About 3 o'clock 

 the next afternoon I looked into the hive and 

 found the bees had left. I didn't see them go 

 and don't know where they went. 



About 4 o'clock the next evening another 

 swarm came out and alighted on the limb of 

 a tree. I hived them. After staying in the 

 hive a while they came out and went back into 

 the hive from which they came first. The first 

 was a small swarm, the second a very large 

 one. What would you think caused them to 

 cut such capers? ILLINOIS. 



Answer. — Bees seem to take delight in doing 

 unaccountable things, things that leave one 

 guessing. Your first case is the more unusual 

 of the two. It is not so very uncommon for a 

 swarm to enter a hive already containing a 

 colony, but why should the whole thing ab- 

 scond? A virgin in the swarm helps a little as 

 a guess, and possibly the hive was standing in 

 a hot place, which, together with the excite- 

 ment of the intrusion, made them swarm out. 



The second case happens rather often, pos- 

 sibly because the queen has difficulty in going 

 with the swarm, and possibly for some 

 we don't know anything about. 



the Dc 



Demaree Plan — Other Questions 



1. I have 17 swarms so far. If I practice 

 : or Allen plan of swarm preven- 

 tion what will I do with so many bees after 

 the honey season is over? 



2. Should all queen-cells be cut out before 

 the brood-frames are put into the upper story? 



3. If after getting the swarm built up I 

 should put comb-honey supers on, wouldn't the 

 bees likely begin to swarm? 



4. Do you believe in swarm prevention? I 

 should think it better than having swarms" 

 emerge, as I should think that more honey will 

 be produced than having the swarms leave. 



5. A neighbor had a swarm emerge from his 

 house. I hived it and the next morning it was 

 out on a small tree about two feet high. I 

 hived it again for him and a couple of days 

 later 1 went over to his place and behold the 

 swarm had left. After about 8 or 10 days a 

 second one came out and I hived it. Next 

 morning it was out, and so I hived it again. 

 This time I put in a comb with young brood 

 and it stayed. In about three days a third 

 one came out and he gave it to me. I carried 

 it home in a basket and put it into an old 

 hive with four frames with full sheets of foun- 



