THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW, 



69 



killing the queen when she is allowed to go 

 back with the bees. The drone trap is an 

 excellent device, but it is not an auto- 

 matic hiver. My idea of a self-hiver is a 

 contrivance that can be adjusted in the 

 spring and can be left to care for itself until 

 the bees are overhauled in the fall. In fact, 

 I have some colonies arranged for swarming 

 now upon their winter stands, as an experi- 

 ment ; besides keeping out the mice, I am 

 in hopes that the hiver can be worked on 

 these colonies as a permanent fixture. I 

 found they had filled four sets of brood 

 frames solid full of honey, so I concluded to 

 allow them to stand as they were and note 

 the result in the spring. One thing I am 

 sure of, tremendous colonies of bees can be 

 held together with the hiver, and with tre- 

 mendous colonies of bees immense quanti- 

 ties of honey will be gathered, whether it be 

 in comb or extracted form. 

 Bevebly, Mass. Feb. 21, 1893. 



The Self - Hiver Not Only Hives Swarms 



but Discourages Swarming by 



Killing Off the Drones. 



O. J. BAEBEB. 



^jj» HAVE an out-apiary and a home api- 

 ^ ary, and I began the season by putting 

 •''» 20 self-hivers in my out-apiary. My 

 experience with them has been very satisfac- 

 tory, as they were a complete success in hiv- 

 ing the swarms in good shape. I visited the 

 apiary in about ten days after first placing 

 the self-hivers on the hives, and found near- 

 ly all the drones in the yard dead, and most 

 of the entrances to bottom hives badly clog- 

 ged with dead drones. The queen excluders 

 on front of hive were made of lath, covered 

 on one side with perforated zinc, and were 

 1)^x1)^x123^ inches. This did not allow 

 space enough for dead drones, so I enlarged 

 the space making it as large again. I had 

 no further trouble with dead drones clog- 

 ging the entrance. 



I also found that one swarm that had start- 

 ed queen cells when I put on the self-hivers, 

 had destroyed the queen cells and given up 

 swarming. On my first examination after 

 placing self-hivers, I had considerable 

 trouble in satisfying myself as to whether 

 the bees had swarmed or not, as I had placed 



in the bottom hive a full set of comb, but I 

 found that by putting in a set of frames 

 with starters only, I had less trouble to tell 

 whether or not they had swarmed. 



Having some other hives in the same yard 

 that had on no self-hivers, I watched them 

 carefully to see if I could detect any differ- 

 ence in the work of the colonies, but as far 

 as I could see the colonies with the self- 

 hivers did just as well as those without. Of 

 those colonies with self-hivers I do not think 

 that more than three or four swarmed dur- 

 ing the whole season. If the self-hivers are 

 placed on the hives early in the season I con- 

 sider them almost non-swarmers, because 

 they keep the drones killed off. 



I have never yet in my experience found 

 the apex of the self-hiver clogged with dead 

 bees. I use a hive set upon a loose bottom, 

 with cleats nailed across the upper ends con- 

 cealing the ends of the frames. I remove 

 one of these cleats from the front of the hive 

 and in its place put a piece of queen-exclud- 

 ing zinc, directly in front of the apex of the 

 hiver and I find that about one-half the bees 

 pass through this zinc, and the other half go 

 out and in at the usual place. 



In the fall I found a queen below, and no 

 sign of one above. The queen must have 

 either gone below without swarming, or 

 killed the young queens, for there were no 

 signs of queen cells above. From my ex- 

 perience with the " Pratt " self-hiver during 

 the past season, I think that if rightly man- 

 aged it will save the labor of one man in the 

 apiary, at least nine-tenths of the time as 

 far as watching for swarms is concerned, 



In my out apiary I had 14 colonies on 

 which I did not use self-hivers. As they 

 were getting strong and about to swarm, and 

 I did not want to stay with them, I thought 

 I would try an experiment. I placed queen- 

 excluding boxes in front of the hives, large 

 enough to give room for dead drones. I 

 made these boxes .3 x 3 x 12)-^ inches. I con- 

 sider this size as about right. This appear- 

 ed to kill off the most of the drones. These 

 boxes I left on the hives during the rest of 

 the season, except when I visited the yard, 

 (about once in ten days) when I removed 

 them and left them oft' while I was in the 

 yard, in order to let virgin queens have a 

 chance to become fertilized. I always re- 

 placed them when I left the yard. This plan 

 kept the colonies strong, and so far as I could 

 see worked satisfactorily. I always give my 

 bees plenty of upper hives and comb to work 



