54 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



September, ahd is almost invariably meagre 

 in quantity and difficult of sale on account 

 of its poor quality and appearance. It be- 

 comes an object, therefore, to secure as much 

 as possible of the former in a salable condi- 

 tion, even at the expense, if necessary, of the 

 latter. And again, swarming comes almost 

 entirely during the early honey flow, and it 

 is then that the desire for brood rearing is at 

 its height. The (luestion at once presents 

 itself, are brood and honey in the brood 

 combs, or, honey in the sections, the more 

 profitable? For myself, I have no hesitation 

 in deciding that the latter must have the 

 preference. 



It may be that some will question whether 

 this is a necessary alternative, and ask 

 whether I may not have the brood and honey 

 in the brood combs and the honey in the 

 sections too? (Jr whether, in any event, both 

 the brood and the honey in the brood 

 chamber are not necessary, and therefore 

 profitable y 



In determining the proper answers to these 

 questions, it is well to consider, first, what 

 would be the probable difference in the re- 

 sult in I'espectto the amount of comb honey? 

 In contracting the brood chamber, I decrease 

 it the capacity of five L. frames, and I am 

 unable to estimate that these could be filled 

 with brood and honey at an expense less 

 than a twenty-five pound case of comb honey 

 of the value of, say $;?.7."), an amount of prof- 

 it on a single colony well worth a diligent 

 eft'oi't to secure. Whether that amount of 

 honey extra, stored and used in the brood 

 chamber at that season of the year, is, in my 

 locality, of any advantage at all, is to my 

 mind, very problematical. This extra brood 

 can be of no use during the white honey 

 flow, and at the advent of the fall season the 

 lives of the bees hatched therefrom are well 

 nigh run, and as they must have food du- 

 ring the intervening season of dearth, they 

 will probably have used most of that portion 

 of the twenty-five i>ounds that was left after 

 receiving what was necessary to nourish them 

 in their earlier stages. 



Then a failure to contract the hive for a 

 swarm may work harm in another way. 

 There are, we will say, yet two weeks of good 

 honey gathering, and for six or eight days 

 the bees may confine their operations to the 

 brood chamber, and then, loth to go into the 

 sections, waste several days, perhaps the rest 

 of the season, in idleness: while, with con- 

 traction, work in the sections begins at once, 

 and continues without interruption. 



I have said sufficient to indicate that with 

 me, at least, neither the extra brood nor 

 honey can yield much profit, for, ordinarily, 

 little of the honey remains, and the brood 

 reared in five L. frames is sufficient to keep 

 the colony strong. But there is another point 

 which, at the risk of being charged with in- 

 consistency, I will call attention to. If not 

 forced into the sections at once, many colo- 

 nies, and especially Italians, will so clog the 

 brood-nest with honey, that it assumes the 

 dimensions of one's two fists. Of course 

 such extreme contraction is injurious and 

 can be easiest avoided by a proper reduction 

 of the brood-nest at the time the swarm is 

 hived. 



I have only time to say further that I con- 

 tract by dividing the hive horizontally, using 

 the new Heddon hive. JSo statement is need- 

 ed to show that this is much the better way. 

 After the early crop is gathered, and before 

 the fall flow begins, I eidarge the hive to its 

 full size. This gives loom for what may be 

 gathered in the fall to be stored convenient 

 for winter use and at the same time leaves 

 plenty of room for all the brood a colony is 

 likely to rear at this season of the year. This 

 plan suits me all around. I want the honey 

 there for winter, I want all the brood I can 

 have at that time, and I want a full sized 

 hive to winter in. From my own experience 

 there comes no uncertain utterance with 

 respect to the desirability of brood and hive 

 room. 



Lapeee, Mich. April 2, 1889. 



The Somber Side of "Contraction"— A Con- 

 servative, Conscientious Article. 



DK. C. C. MIIiLEE. 



! HE CONTRACTION to be talked about. 

 I understand to be contraction during 

 the honey harvest for the sake of get- 

 ting honey put in supers instead of in 

 the brood combs. It is practiced mainly, if 

 not entirely, by raisers of comb honey. I 

 have raised comb honey with ten Langstroth 

 combs in the hive, eight, seven and six, and 

 in hundreds of cases with four or five, in 

 some cases with three, two, and even with 

 but a single comb. In the latter case no 

 queen was in the hive. Strong reasons will 

 probably be given for and against contrac- 

 tion, and some of these reasons are apt to be 

 carried farther, on each side of the question, 

 than facts will warrant. 



So long as there is abundance of room in 

 the brood combs, I have not found the bees 

 anxious to leave this empty space unoccupied 

 in the brood-cliamber to commence work 

 upon empty sections. If, however, room in 

 the brood-chamber be limited, as soon as it 

 is all occupied, if the honey flow continues, 

 the bees in usf store in the sections. ( )ne ob- 

 ject of contraction, there, is to force the bees 

 into the sections. I do not lay any particular 

 stress on this. Bees will commence work in 

 sections sooner if coaxed in than driven. A 

 section i^artly or wholly filled, and then the 

 honey extracted in the fall and the section 

 cleaned out by the bees, makes a (xtif which, 

 put into the central part of a super the fol- 

 lowing summer, will, at least in my case, 

 start the bees at work in the super just as 

 soon as it is at all desirable to have them 

 there. The seasons of 1887 and 1888 were, in 

 my locality, failures. I put on supers giving 

 each an emptied section as bait, and in near- 

 ly every case work was commenced in the 

 supers, A very few colonies succeeded in 

 filling a suiter, some worked a few sections 

 nearest the bait, but the large majority filled 

 and sealed the bait section and left all the 

 empty sections unworked. The brood-nest 

 was contracted in most of these cases, but is 

 it at all likely that this contraction was just 

 effective enough to start the bees in the bait 

 and no other section? 



