THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



179 



vided with one sectiou each on a new stand. 

 As the queen cells provided are about to 

 hatch, I give one good cell to each of the 

 sections on tho new stands, placing the cells 

 in plain sight, under tho onameled cloths, 

 between the combs on top. I pay no atten- 

 tion to the queen cells already in the combs 

 below, as the cell given will hatch tirst 

 by several days and the tirst queen out will 

 attend to the other cells. In three or four 

 days after the queen is out I examine the 

 combs until I find some of the first queen 

 cells destroyed which I accept as proof that 

 the choice cell is all right and make no fur- 

 ther search until the que(>n should V)e laying, 

 when I look again to be sure that all is well. 

 As the bees continue to swarm, the one 

 section of brood left from each swarm is 

 placed upon one of the sections containing 

 a young queen, until eacli has a full hive of 

 two sections. A queen excluding honey 

 board is now placed upon each, and upon 

 this is set the section of brood left from 

 each swarm, care being taken to destroy the 

 queen cells in them. On top of these swarms 

 I often pile up these sections of brood until 

 they are five and six high. In a few days 

 such colonies are the most powerful in the 

 yard ; and by removing the hives above the 

 honey boards, when all tlie brood has hatch- 

 ed, shaking the bees from them at the en- 

 trance below, and putting on supers, first 

 class results in comb honey may be secured. 

 I usually leave the hives piled up just as 

 they were placed to be tilled with honey to 

 be extracted or saved for feeding as may be 

 desired. 



Who says now that we cannot make the 

 bees, left in the old hive after swarming, 

 productive of honey V I have freiiuently 

 ^found four to six hives (sections) solid full 

 of honey in the fall and a first class colony 

 in the hive below the queen excluder. 



I see in Gleanings for May 1st, page 3r)G, 

 that Geo. F. Robbins tries to explain nearly 

 the same system that 1 have outlined in 

 this article ; but with the old-fashioned, 

 full-brood-chamber hives. I have no doubt 

 that he is a skillful apiarist, yet how clumsy 

 his management seems to one accustomed 

 to using small, divisible-brood-chamber 

 hives. My management may seem tedious 

 and fussy on account of my poor way of 

 explaining it, but in all this work, with an 

 apiary of KJO colonies, siiring count, there is 

 no necessity of lifting a single comb, all the 

 work being done by handling hives. After 



an experience of twenty-five years with 

 small, divisible - l)rood - chamber hives I 

 could no more think of giving them up than 

 cities could give up their street cars and go 

 back to hacks anel coaches. In another 

 article I will give my method where large 

 increase is desirabie. 



Ep the way, I see that Bro. Root is begin- 

 ning to talk of the necessity of handling 

 hives instead of frames; verily, the world does 

 move. As soon as the importance of hand- 

 ling hives instead of frames is fully recog- 

 nized, the full brood chamber is doomed. 



FoKESTViLLE, Minn. May G, 181)1. 



Bee-Escapes a Success With Shallow Su- 

 pers. 



J. F. m'INTYBE. . 



"^j^AST SEASON, to have it just right, I 

 ^t)jl purchased one of Dibbern's four 

 cornered escapes, and I made several 

 double cone Reese escapes, putting from one 

 to four escapes in each board. In all my 

 experiments with escapes I always put a 

 super full of empty comb below the escape, 

 to give room for the bees to get out of the 

 super above the escape. Early in the season 

 the bees would nearly all get out of the 

 supers in about eight hours, or during the 

 night, but the supers were not full of bees 

 or honey. When we were ready to extract I 

 thought I would try them again, so I placed 

 them under some supers that were full of 

 bees and honey. They were full depth 

 Langstroth supers, fourteen inches wide in- 

 side. I examined them every day for three 

 days. At the end af that time the supers 

 were still about half full of bees, so I took 

 the escapes off in disgust and put them 

 away. This spring I received three escapes 

 from R. & E. C. Porter. I was pleased with 

 the positive principle of these escapes and 

 tried them in various ways to find out some- 

 thing definite as to the time it would take to 

 empty different sized supers. The single 

 tier section supers were always emptied first; 

 average time five hours. 



I consider this escape thoroughly practi- 

 cal for removing comb honey; saving per- 

 haps two-thirds of the work, to say nothing 

 of stings, robbers and other disagreeable 

 things connected with the old way. The 

 small extracting supers come next, taking 

 about six hours on the average to clear the 

 bees out. It may be practical to use these 

 escapes in connection with small frames and 



