THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



55 



The objection has been urged that when 

 the brood-nest is contracted the queen is apt 

 to lay in the supers unless a queen-excluder 

 is used. I have not used a queen-excluder 

 between the brood-chamber and the sections, 

 merely a Heddon slat honey-board, and 1 

 have had no trouble with the queen going 

 into the supers. I think not one section in a 

 thousand has had eggs laid in it. Possibly 

 the case might be ditterent if I did not use 

 separators. 



1 think the two principal reasons in favor 

 of contraction are, tirst, the white honey is 

 all forced into the sections, giving that much 

 more tirst-class honey to be sold, and leaving 

 the brood-chamber to be tilled up with a 

 poorer class of honey, or with sugar syrup; 

 and, second, the partial suppression of breed- 

 ing, so that a large quantity of bees will not 

 be raised too late to be of any service in 

 SGCuring the harvest. As to the second reason, 

 I am skeptical. It is true a bee does not go 

 to work m the field till about 37 days after 

 the egg is laid, from which it hatches, and 

 from this it might be hastily concluded that 

 where the white honey harvest lasts only 

 about live weeks, the laying of the queen 

 during that time would only be the means of 

 brmgiug forth a lot of consumers ready for 

 work just after there ceased to be any work 

 for them to do. But it must not be forgot- 

 ten that, although 37 days may ordinarily 

 elapse from the laying of the egg before the 

 bee is ready for field work, it forms an im- 

 portant element in the ///rework from the 

 very moment of emerging from its cell, and 

 the more bees there are for hive work, the 

 more can be spared to go into the field. Al- 

 though it is laid down as a general rule that 

 a worker does not go to the field till l(i days 

 old, it must not be supposed that is a fixed 

 time without regard to circumstances. I have 

 seen workers that I know were only five days 

 old carrying in pollen. A queen had been 

 given sealed brood without any bees, and five 

 days later I saw the young workers carrying 

 in pollen. In this case there were no older 

 bees, and is it not possible that a large force 

 of young bees in the hive might be the means 

 of sending to the field, workers of no greater 

 age than five days? In any case, every egg 

 laid as much as 21 days before the close of 

 the honey harvest may be counted as an ad- 

 dition to the working force. It looks to me 

 reasonable that the fewer eggs laid during 

 the last 21 days of the honey harvest tlie bet- 

 ter, providing no after harvest comes. Still, 

 the bees don't always go by my reasoning, 

 and I must confess that I have observed a 

 number of cases ii- which the queen had un- 

 limited room right through the whole season, 

 and although at the beginning of the season 

 the colonies were not up to average strength, 

 they accomplished more than average results. 

 So I am rather forced to the belief, without 

 seeing any good reason for it, that it may 

 give a large yield to let the queen have full 

 swing throughout the season. 



Whether it is best to force all the white 

 honey in the supers, leaving the bees to be 

 fed later, or to fill up on fall flowers, may 

 depend somewhat on circumstances. If de- 

 pendence is placed on fall flowers, then is it 

 not important to have as strong a force as 



possible to store this fall honey? If so, con- 

 traction may defeat us. If we are to depend 

 on feeding, then we must count on the extra 

 labor, and I seriously doubt whether bees 

 thus fed, will in general be in as good condi- 

 tion for winter as those which have been 

 allowed to store their own supplies directly 

 from the flowers. From this it seems pos- 

 sible that, even if a larger crop of white 

 honey may be secured this year by contrac- 

 tion and feeding, it may be so much at the 

 expense of next year's crop, that, in the long 

 run, contracting may be unprofitable. 



All things considered, I am somewhat in 

 doubt as to the whole matter. I do not know 

 that contraction is never profitable, and I do 

 not know that it is never unprofitable, but I 

 know that it involves labor, and like others, 

 I want a minimum of labor, and as I am 

 doubtful as to its good results, I am growing 

 more in favor of the simple plan of letting 

 the bees have full room in the brood-nest all 

 the year round. 



Marengo, III. April 1, 1889. 



Contracting the Brood - Nest. One of the 



Greatest Advantages of all Modern 



Manipulation. 



JAMES HEDDON. 



f BELIEVE it was once settled that the 

 writer of these lines was the first to 

 make public the system of contracting 

 the brood chamber, as a system, and 

 for the purpose at that time described, and 

 since enjoyed by hundreds of our most suc- 

 cessful honey producers. This was done in 

 a bee paper, now dead, but at that time pub- 

 lished in Ohio. 



Later, a fuller and more comprehensive 

 description and plea for the system, I placed 

 in the American Bee Journal for 1SS5, see 

 page 437. The article was illustrated by an 

 ill-shapen cut representing my modification 

 of the Langstroth hive as being shorter from 

 front to rear than from side to side, when 

 exactly the reverse was true. Later, Mr. G. 

 M. Doolittle wrote an article in favor of the 

 system. 



As usual, in your introduction, you have 

 made many of the salient i)oints in favor of 

 this splendid system. Still, I will quote, with 

 your permission, quite extensively from my 

 article above referred to. Before so doing, 

 however, it may be proper to say that my at- 

 tention was first turned toward the system 

 by the advice of a friend who had practiced 

 it for several years quietly and to himself. I 

 quote the article as follows: 



" During the past three years I have been 

 carefully testing a hive-contracting system, 

 and I have found it of great value, as regards 

 both summer and winter success. It has be- 

 come a permanent system in my apiaries 

 when running for comb honey, and now, 

 after testing it for three seasons, I feel pre- 

 pared to speak of what I know. 



I hive all swarms, whether first or second 

 swarms, upon five Langstroth frames of 

 foundation, filling up the rest of the space 

 in an 8-frame liive, with two contractors or 

 ' dummies.' I find that the queen uses these 



