'■W^' 



i-.-fss' 



ILLINiOIS STATE BEE-KEBPEJRS' ASSOCIATION 



213 



thought his bees had honey enough, 

 and neglected them. He received al- 

 most no honey at all this season. What 

 little he secured of comla honey is in 

 my boney-room, perhaps 150 pounds. 

 He must have 20 lor 30 colonies of bees. 

 I merely state this to show the im- 

 portance of watcliing our bees at all 

 times, and seeing that they are always 

 supplied iwdth honey. We fed about 

 a'thousand pounds of honey. The sugar 

 was mostly made into a syrup, and fed 

 as a syrup in the hives. The honey 

 we fed was white clover honey mixed 

 with the white daisy, giving it a better 

 taste. That was in- ten-gallon cans, 

 and I would ladle laut a pound or two 

 at a time with a wooden ladle, going 

 around through the yard, and wher- 

 ever needed I would supply them. 



Mr. Cyrenius — WOien do you begin to 

 feed your bees in the spring? 



Mr. Crane — ^There is no time in the 

 whole year when the feeding is so val- 

 uable as it is between fruit-blossom 

 and white clover. Tlhat is the time 

 fwthen you need bnood reared in the 

 liargest quantity, and if the honey fails, 

 as it almost always does during that 

 time, the rearing of brood, unless there 

 is a good supply of honey in the hives, 

 is cut off, and that cuts off our work- 

 ers, and cuts down our storing iof 

 honey. 



Mr. McEvoy — The fate of the honey 

 crop hangs upon feeding at that time. 

 I would uncap that about every other 

 evening. The brood is never as well 

 fed after they use the unsealed honey, 

 and I would feed them because you are 

 ■bringing forward the brood that is go- 

 ing to gather your honey crop. -During 

 25 or 30 years I have pushed the feed- 

 ing at that time, beoailse the fate of 

 the honey crop hangs upon feeding at 

 that time. 



Mr. Lansing — How many colonies 

 of bees? 



Mr. Crane — ^We had in the spring 

 about 600 colonies. 



Mr. Root — That is so important, be- 

 cause those of us who have had large 

 experience have found sometimes dur- 

 ing that time the bees will begin to 

 kill their drones, and even tear out 

 their comb. 



"Will our delegate, Mr. E. L. Hof- 

 mann, of Minnesota, give us in a very 

 few words how he cares for his bees 

 and gets those large crops of honey 

 in the North?" 



Mr. Hofmann — I had this struck off 

 hurriedly, and there was one thing I 

 omitted. If you have disease in your 

 yard. You probably could not use this. 



PROFITABLE BEE-MANAGEMENT 

 WITHOUT SWARMING. 



I am asked to explain my method 

 of managing bees for profit without 

 swarming. This I will endeavor to 

 do briefly, and with no pretense of ad- 

 vancing anything new. 



Among the features, that recomi- 

 mended the plan to me, and led me to 

 adopt it, are these: It combines the 

 advantages of in-door and out- door 

 wintering; it gives us strong colonies 

 early in the season, controls swarm- 

 ing, and keeps the bees and brood to- 

 gether throughout the season; it 

 gives the queen unlimited room dur- 

 ing the height of the egg-laying sea- 

 son and at extracting time there is 

 never any brood, in the supers, to con- 

 tend with; it does not make it neces- 

 sary to have brood-chambers and su- 

 pers of different depths, nor does it 

 require a specially made hive. 



Our supers and brood chambers are 

 all alike. We use nothing but the 

 regular single-walled 10-frame body, 

 holding frames of Langstroth dimen- 

 sions. With us it has yielded re- 

 markable returns in honey, and I 

 might also say that all the storing 

 is done in the supers first, and if the 

 season is not above the average, the 

 bees will have to be fed in some way 

 or other. 



Before going into detail, I want to 

 emphasize the fact that, to have the 

 best success, you must have a good, 

 vigorous queen not over two years old, 

 and you should have at least two full- 

 depth supers, filled with combs, ready 

 for each colony, and if these combs 

 have had brood in them, so much the 

 better. 



Each year after the bass-wood flow, 

 all two-year old queens are superseded 

 artificially. This one thing, naore 

 than else, helps to keep up a remark- 

 able uniformity among colonies, and, 

 when a visit is made to an out-yard, 

 all colonies are generally ready for 

 the same treatment. 



If there should be anything in my 

 method to arouse sufficient interest in 

 this convention, then the reasons for 

 managing and manipulating, as I do, 

 will be brought out in discussion. 



