i32 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



would not fill seven Langstroth frames with 

 brood in twenty-one days, I would exchange 

 her for a better one." Almost involuntarily 

 came the exclamation : "If we used a hive 

 so large that an ordinarily prolific queen 

 could not fill it with brood at the proper 

 time, we would exchange it for a smaller one." 

 No one advocates large hives without bring- 

 ing forward as an argument that colonies in 

 such hives store the most honey. Well, 

 suppose they do. Doesn't it take more and 

 higher-priced lumber to build them, and 

 more combs to fill them, and a longer time 

 to extract the honey from them ? Where is 

 the gain ? Attempting to secure the larg- 

 est yield per colouy, is the narrowest kind of 

 bee-keeping, and will never lead to perfect 

 success. We must endeavor to so employ 

 our labor and capital as to secure the great- 

 est profit, irrespective of the yield per 

 colo7iy. The largest yield per colony and 

 the greatest i^rofit are not always found in 

 the same apiary. A specific answer to our 

 correspondent's hypothetical question would 

 be, give each queen combs equal in quantity 

 to about eight Langstroth combs. 



Wide Top Bars vs. Honey Boards. 



Sheffield. 111., July 8, 1889. 



Fkiend H. — If I remember aright there 

 was, some time ago, a few words in the bee 

 papers as to discarding honey boards, or 

 something to that effect. 



Some seem to think that we can't get 

 along without them, but I have found that 

 we can, and that they are a waste of money ; 

 besides, it is a sticky job tearing them off 

 every time the hives are opened. 



I have been trying for two summers to 

 discard them, to have nothing, between the 

 brood frames and sections and yet not have 

 brace combs built against the sections, and 

 I've got it. 



I have one hundred hives in use this sum- 

 mer without the honey board, and not a sin- 

 gle piece of brace comb in one of them. 



I never had any pleasure handling bees be- 

 fore. A hive can be looked through in half 

 the time, and every thing will be as neat as a 

 painted floor. 



If this will be of any benefit to the readers 

 of the Review I will give directions. 



Yours truly, A. L. Kildow. 



In reply to the above we said : "Certainly, 

 friend K., if the honey board can be dis- 

 pensed with, let us know about it by all 

 means." Here is his response: — 



Sheffield, 111., July 14, 188!). 



Fbiend H.: — Your card at hand. I am 

 using a hive that holds eight frames, 17x9 V^, 

 my frame is made of ''« stuff, except the top 

 bar, which is made 1)4 wide by }.^ thick, 



leaving a 8-ir. space for the bees to come 

 up through ; which is as near a queen ex- 

 cluder as is perforated zinc. 



My gauge was misplaced when I was saw- 

 ing one day, and some of the top bars were 

 cut nearly an inch wide. In using this kind 

 of a frame, and hive. 1 have done away with 

 the honey board for tv/o years. Last year I 

 did not know how they would work. It did 

 not take long to find out, but I had all my 

 frames made then. This year I made all my 

 frames as above, and have been scolding my- 

 self for not seeing it long ago, and that 

 some of these old bee-keepers haven't drop- 

 ped on to it long ago. 



A. L. KiLDOW. 



Bro. K., let us state a little experience of 

 ours " along this same line," as Bro. Doo- 

 little says. Years ago, when we first began 

 hiving swarms on foundation, or upon 

 starters only, and transferring the supers 

 from the old hive to the new, we had trouble 

 by the queens entering and occupying the 

 partly finished sections. To remedy this we 

 set about making some queen excluding 

 honey boards. The first step was to move 

 the slats in the Heddon honey board so 

 close together (.^)-32) as to make them queen 

 excluding. To lessen the likelihood of 

 trouble by the slats shrinking and swelling 

 we made them narrower {°4) and had them 

 planed smooth, and then painted them. As 

 queen excluders they were a success ; but 

 the end of the second season found the 

 spaces plugged so full of wax, not propolis, 

 but Jiard wux, that they were thrown aside. 

 W' e cleaned a few by pouring boiling water 

 upon them, but it was too fussy. We then 

 tried making queen excluding honey boards 

 by perforating thin board (;5-16) with a rt-'.V2 

 saw. These worked better, simply because 

 they were only one-half as thick as the slat 

 honey board. We still have some of these 

 perforated wood honey boards in use, but 

 they require cleaning once a year. Being so 

 thin, the accumulations of wax can be taken 

 out with a nail fastened into a handle. We 

 do not doubt that wide, deep top bars will 

 largely prevent the building of brace combs 

 above them, but, if the bees behave with 

 these as they did with us when the slats of 

 the honey board was placed close together, 

 what things these frames would be to han- 

 dle! They would be stuck together from one 

 end to the other, and the lateral movement 

 entirely destroyed. We believe that the 

 older editions of Langstroth's book gave 

 1 '„ as the width of top bar. Mr. Heddon 

 used them tliat width three or four years, 

 then began to make them narrower, only to 



