THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



55 



of vacant cells in the brood-chamber at the be- 

 ijiningof the honey harvest, comes an 'accvis- 

 toment' to the brood-chanihcr for storing honey, 

 instead of the sections, and thus the cjiieen is 

 crowded upon with honey, instead of said honey 

 going into the sections, ""etc. 



That is, if there is honey produced, 

 with a larj^^e hive and not a ver}- prolific 

 queen, ami there is plenty of room in the 

 brood chamber, this honey will be stored 

 in the brood chamber. This isjustour ex- 

 perience, and when producing comb honey 

 with large hives, we would do as some 

 of the large producers of the Kist are do- 

 ing, so I am told, who have nothing to 

 sav publicly, though they quietly work 

 and produce tons and tons of honey, by 

 simply reducing the number of combs, 

 just at the opening of the crop, to the ex- 

 act number that are covered by the brood, 

 which just as efficiently forces the bees 

 into the supers as if a very powerful col- 

 ony had been placed in a small hive. 



When we ])roduced comb honey, let it 

 be remembered, we were already using 

 the large hives, and we did not practice 

 the above-mentioned method, which I 

 am told is so very successful with men 

 like Hlwood; and the result was, with us, 

 that we always had too much honey in 

 the brood -combs for winter, and we were 

 in the habit of extracting it; but I wish to 

 emphasize the fact, that, side by side with 

 smaller hives, our colonies were, on the 

 average, ahead of the others, just that 

 quantity of honey which we were able to 

 take from the brood-combs. 



Now, please bear in mind that our ex- 

 periments were not b.ised upon a hive or 

 two, or upon one year or two, but that 

 we have had as many as a hundred hives 

 of one style, while we had two or three 

 hundred of the other style, for years. It 

 has always been a w onder to me, how 

 comb-honey producers could do without 

 an extractor, and this owing to the fact that 

 in large hives, we always had some that 

 had mare honey in the brood-combs than 

 they needed for winter when producing 

 comb honey. The I'<hvood plan would have 

 done away with this, and would have 

 forced the bees to put that honey in the 

 supers, since the hive, in cases where the 

 queen lacked in prolificness would have 

 been reduced or kept down to a size pro- 

 portionate to the strength of the colony. 

 Now, please do not accuse us of saying 

 that, with comb-honey production in 

 large hives, you wdl have no swarms. 

 We do not even say that, of our own 

 methods, with extracle<l-honey produc- 

 tion. But we do say, and we know every 

 man who tries it will acknowledge, there 

 will be le.ss swarms, many of the colonies 

 will be stronger, ami the production of 



honey, on the average, considerably 

 greater, since there will be a greater 

 average prodtiction of bees in the hive. 

 Mr. Brown .says: "If you have nothing 

 but the care of yotir bees to take up your 

 time, you will probably make more mon- 

 ey with a small hive. If you have a farm 

 to work, you would better use a large 

 hive." But he does not tell us why. 

 When some of our bee-men discuss the 

 hive question, they seem to take it for 

 granted that the small-hive be^-keepsr 

 has all the colonies he can matiage at the 

 opening of spring, and that it is of little 

 import whether all his queens have all 

 the room they need. Mr. Hutchinson 

 says, "Queens cost nothing." We can't 

 take it from that point of view. Queens, 

 to tis in early spring, are the most expen- 

 sive part of a colony, and we want each 

 queen, in every one of our colonies in 

 early spring, to have all the room she 

 needs. If we have 80 colonies in one 

 apiary, we want each one of those 80 

 queens to have the very best chance pos- 

 sible to display its powers, and we con- 

 sider that the cost of the hive, which has 

 to be replaced only once in about 30 

 years, is the smallest item of expense. 

 The interest on the money- cost of a large 

 hive, as compared with that of a small 

 hive, is not to exceed 10 cents per year. 

 This represents a necessary production 

 of onlv about one or two pounds of hon- 

 ev inore each year; and when we consider 

 that a large hive may be made as small, 

 by a division-board, as the smallest hives 

 in the land, and can still, at a moment's 

 notice, accommodate the very best colony 

 in the country, with increased facilities 

 for manipulation, we can but shrug our 

 shoulders at the idea of any return to 

 small hives, even if we de.sired to return 

 to comb honey production. Does this 

 answer Mr. Brown's question? 



Now, Mr. Editor, I sometimes think 

 that it looks as if we had an ax to grind 

 on large hives, but we have no patent, 

 never did have, and don't care — no, not 

 a cop])er cent — whether any one tries our 

 methods or not. We know that it takes 

 more of a bee-kee])er to manage the large 

 hives than the small ones, and therefore 

 have no hesitancy in referring bee-keep- 

 ers to the warning 1 gave some time ago, 

 on trying new things, though ours is not 

 a new thing, neither is it our own idea, 

 but onlv a putting in ])ractice of the ideas 

 advanced by masters in the art long be- 

 fore us. 



.\nd as to the ])ride we might take in 

 creating a larger following among the 

 bee-keepers of the land, we are past that, 

 too, for we have pupils and followers of 



