262 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



Make the solar a catch all for all such 

 things, and it will soon pay for itself in the 

 saving of wax, to say nothing about time 

 saved. 



FoBT Collins, Colo., Oct. 13, 1891. 



Handling Hives More and Frames Less. 



JAMES HEDDON. 



^HY, you have written an ar- 

 ticle on this subject several 

 years ago," says my steno- 

 grapher, as I begin dictating under the above 

 heading. " Yes, more than oue," is my 

 reply. 



Several years back will be found articles 

 in different journals upon the above subject, 

 one or two of which I believe are headed 

 almost exactly as above, as well as those 

 headed " Readily Movable Hives." At that 

 time I had been in the business for years, 

 and constantly under a declining price for 

 our product. I began to see that cost of 

 production must in some way be lessened, 

 else I must withdraw my capital and labor 

 from the business which I always preferred 

 to all others. These thoughts led me to ex- 

 perimenting, and that experimenting to the 

 invention of the hive which I patented, and 

 which Senator Taylor describes and properly 

 credits to me on the first page of your last 

 number. Ever since the advent of that hive, 

 it has gone without saying, among my lielp, 

 that we can manipulate double the number 

 of colonies that could be handled equally 

 well in any of the previous styles of hives, 

 because, as Mr. Taylor truly states, this di- 

 visible brood chamber and style of close tit- 

 ting frames, in combination with the rests 

 and set-screws, allows us to make nearly 

 every useful manipulation quickly and with- 

 out moving a frame; neither must it be 

 understood that the frames are not ' ' readily 

 movable " as well as all of the sections of the 

 hive. 



Mr. Doolittle (page 23.'), last No.,) seems 

 to carry the idea that a hive specially adapted 

 to cutting away one-half of our labors and 

 doing our work so speedily as to thwart rob- 

 bers, was of no special advantage because of 

 the expense in a change of hives. He seems 

 to forget that there are new bee keepers en- 

 tering the field and that ni any of the older 

 ones are increasing their colonies, necessi- 

 tating new hives, and that the advantage in 

 the improvements in hives are many times 



great enough to warrant introducing a new 

 pattern, especially when the same honey 

 board and honey receptacle fits all equally 

 well. I would like to enquire what kind of 

 a new divisible brood chamber hive he can 

 have been using that he can see no special 

 difference between it and a common L. hive 

 with the bottom knocked loose ? If the 

 frames used by Mr. Doolittle were such that 

 two of them could be worked back into one 

 of his old style, and other things about his 

 hive were as badly disarranged, I don't 

 wonder at his failure and the difference of 

 opinion between him and Senator Taylor. 

 But one thing must be remembered, Mr. D. 

 has all these years schooled himself, as his 

 articles show, to a tedious, round-about 

 method of manipulation; much more so than 

 methods used by others who have used sus- 

 pended frames; so of course he must feel 

 like a bird liberated from a cage, not know- 

 ing what to do when out in the broad field of 

 speed and safety. 



Mr. D's statement of the twenty thousand 

 dollars his bees have paid him in the last 

 twenty years is no argument; there are very 

 many other conditions to be considered; and, 

 better than I know that they have paid $20,- 

 000, do I know that they would have paid 

 $30,000 had he kept double the number of 

 colonies in hives that would have necessitated 

 no more work in his apiary. 



DowAGiAC, Mich., Oct. 12, 1891. 



Crystalization of Sugar Syrup. 



F. A. GEMMILL. 



fHAVE repeatedly had to feed sugar 

 syrup to my bees in the fall to make up 

 the deficiency in stores necessary for 

 wintering them safely and successfully. 

 You will observe, I feed to make up the defi- 

 ciency, leaving any honey there might be in 

 the hive. Now, I never had any ditllculty 

 worth mentioning in the syrup crystallizing 

 in the coml)S, as I used tartaric acid a la 

 Heddon, until this season, when I found 

 thirteen colonies with honey (fall flowers) 

 which I desired to remove completely. Five 

 drawn combs, containing neither a drop of 

 honey nor a grain of pollen, were placed in 

 each brood chamber, and the bees from the 

 thirteen colonies shaken off upon the empty 

 combs. A Miller feeder was given each col- 

 ony and never allowed to be empty till 

 twenty-eight pounds of granulated sugar 



