108 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



heavy flow of honey dew, which is very 

 seldom the case. Then the brood nest has 

 to be reconstructed, and we are out of 

 pocket on two items. First, the honey 

 consumed by the bees to produce the wax 

 necessary to that effect. Second, the 

 honey that these bees would have brought 

 in and stored in the sections had they not. 

 been busy in building the new brood nest. 



2nd. The white wood flow may be only 

 medium, and this followed by an inter- 

 ruption during which enough may be 

 brought in to keep up brood rearing, at 

 least, to some extent. This is the most 

 usual case. Then we are without surplus 

 from the whitewood during that period; 

 while, if there had been no brood nest to 

 rebuild, we would have had some. The 

 amount of brood raised will be from none, 

 when the "shaking" is done, to but little, 

 for a good while; and the resulting loss of 

 bees will be keenly felt in June and July, 

 when the basswood and sourwood are in 

 blossom. 



3rd. The whitewood flow may be light, 

 or spoiled by bad weather, and then fol^ 

 lowed by a nearly total interruption of a 

 week or two. Then no brood nest will be 

 rebuilt until the next flow, and no brood 

 reared during perhaps three or four weeks. 



That colony will never give any surplus 

 this year. 



Now suppose that instead of "shaking," 

 we had caged the queen. Then, in every 

 case, we would have been ahead at least 

 all of the honey cousumed in making wax 

 to build the new combs, and that which 

 would have been gathered by the bees 

 that, instead, were working on the new 

 brood nest. In every case the loss of 

 brood would have been less, especially in 

 the last one. With combs already there, 

 and containing more or less honey, the 

 brood rearing would never cease com- 

 pletely, and is quickly resumed, at least, 

 to some extent. 



As to the question of work, there is no 

 more work in the caging method than in 

 any other, and considerably less than in 

 most of them. One visit to cage the 

 queens, another a week later to destroy 

 the queen cells, and a third one four or 

 five days later to release the queens. This 

 last takes but little time, as it is not nec- 

 essary to go all over the combs. No 

 shaking of combs, no moving of hives, no 

 extra hives to contain the swarms; in a 

 word, the simplest way of all, consistent 

 with the object in view. 



Knoxville, Tenn. Dec. 10, 1905. 



^=>-^"^V^| 



Helpful Hints in Extensive 

 Bee-Keeping". 



E. D. TOWNSEND. 



REALIZE that I am using considerable 

 space in this spring protection talk 

 but we must take into consideration the 

 fact, that in getting our bees through the 

 spring in the very best possible condition, 

 to take care of our surplus in June, lies 

 much of our success. 



The majority of our bees are wintered 

 with the hive covers removed. Thus the 



propolis is broken, and when the covers 

 are replaced on the hives, if no protection 

 is given, there would be a direct draft 

 through the hive. To overcome this 

 trouble we wrap our hives in tarred paper, 

 folding it over the top of the hive, and 

 fastening it with four laths at the bottom 

 of the hive. 



We sometimes remove the cover and 



