THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



27 



jection works ec|ually well if we put the 

 second hive on top. The fact is plain, 

 that yon hair nioir room in your fzco Ii ires 

 than can possibly Ih' needed t>y one queen, 

 ami that the reniainino space must he Jilt- 

 ed roith honey he/ore the sections are fill- 

 ed. If your hive is exceedingly strong, 

 you will prohahlv harvest enough more 

 honey to still render vour course more 

 rational than that followed by those who 

 insist on cramping the queen, however 

 prolific, in a narrow ct)inj>ass; but there 

 will be cases when your judgement will 

 not prove equal to the task, and in these 

 cases your crop of comb honey will be null 

 unless there is absolutely no brood in one 

 of the two stories, and you perceive it in 

 time to remove it. My way is plainly the 

 best, for I increase or decrease the room 

 only as fast as needed, one comb at a time 

 if neces ary; and when the hive is at its 

 full capacity, if the (lueen can fill it I 

 have it all in one compact mass, and have 

 a greater surface on top of the brood- 

 chamber for supers. That is, more bees 

 can ascend to the sujier at one time, 

 and that super with a greater capac- 

 ity is nearer to the brood than one 

 of the same size with vour two-story hive. 

 We all know how important it is in the 

 spring to have the sui)ers close to the 

 brood. My hive is not so top-heavy, 

 thus less liable to tip accidentally. If the 

 queen does not prove eijual to the emer- 

 gency, and does not fill all the combs, 

 there is no difficulty in contracting the 

 brood-chamber by removing the combs 

 that have no brood, to the .size wanted by 

 our friends, the lovers of contraction and 

 other methods. With your small hives 

 you have no division-board or dummy; or 

 if you have one it is in the honey-house, 

 piled under a lot of other traps, because 

 you use it only in extraordinar}- circum- 

 stances. Mine is always herein the hive, 

 for I have one space especially reserved for 

 that purpose; and withi ml this dunmiy, as I 

 said before, our hive would have a capacitv 

 for II frames and not 10. So the reducing 

 of the capacity of the brood-chamber is 

 only a moment's work. 



Now, don't understand me advising 

 contraction, for I don't. I want only to 

 increase the capacity of the brood cham- 

 ber (if it is not fully occupied already by 

 a populous colony i as fast as needed, and 

 then leave it till the summer is over. If 

 I raised comb honey 1 would not object 

 to a few j)ounds of hoiuy more than need- 

 ed in the brofxl-combs; for I should ex- 

 pect to use an extractor whenever I saw 

 the need of it. When raising extracted 

 honey, however, there is no fear of too 

 nmch honey below, if plenty of empty 



comb has been given above when the har- 

 vest was on, and the bees have not had to 

 wait. I have seen the lime when it was 

 necessary to crowd the bees a little to get 

 them to put enough lioney for winter in 

 the brood chafuber. 



I believe I have said somewhere already 

 that we have tried double brood-cham- 

 bers for extracting, and we did not like 

 them. The addition of a full story, all at 

 one time, unless it is on a hive that has 

 already been given all the room the queen 

 could fill, and is, therefore, very populous, 

 seems to me more than needed. The queen 

 also .seems to be more readily attracted 

 to a large body of this kind, and to de- 

 sert the lower hive. Sometimes she will 

 breed in both apartments; and when one 

 tries to find frames full of honey they 

 have to be taken from the sides, or combs 

 of brood have to be extracted, which 

 makes a possibility of throwing some of 

 the grubs out into the honey. I know 

 that .some of our bee-kee])ers are so care- 

 ful that this never hap])ens to them, but 

 I confess I can't extract every comb my- 

 self, even if I were as faultless as they, 

 and I have to rely on a more or less care- 

 ful boy to turn the crank. 



In short, T have just as much objection 

 to using full stories, Langstroth size, for 

 supers, as I have to using the little, shal- 

 low, four-and-a-fourth-inch toy extract- 

 ing-frames, which run matters to the 

 other extreme, and make too much hand- 

 ling for the amount of honey harvested. 

 The section-case is little enough for comb 

 honey, but the size is entirely inadequate 

 when extracting is the aim; and if you 

 had only tried the six-inch extracting- 

 frames I know you would agree with me. 



I propose, in my next, to consider the 

 objectionable features of large hives. It 

 has been lately said, by some apiarists, 

 that I was leading the folks on the wrong 

 track, so I nuist atone by showing you 

 wherein our faults lie. I hope I am not 

 repeating my.self too much. I notice in 

 reading over my past articles, that I 

 might have condensed my thoughts a 

 little more, and will try to do this in the 

 future. 



The editor of (ileanings comments as 

 follcjws: 



[I nui.st admit that Mr, Dadaut has giv- 

 en some pretty .solid arguments in favor 

 of his large single brood-chanil)er as 

 against two brooil-chambers of eight- 

 frame capacity. If I am correct, his ten 

 frame (Juinby hive holds .in etjuivalent of 

 12 I.,, frames. \ccordingly, then, Mr. 

 D's. position is that two eights make four 

 frames too man v. 



