, Vr^- '". -.-iCr*'*^- **i ■ •^r?J? 



90 



SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



whether that young' queen would be 

 able to get down below or be fertil- 

 ized or not. Somehow or other I have 

 a very nervous feeling in a good many 

 cases that there would be the danger 

 of swarming. If there are those who 

 have tried it, or those who have rea- 

 son to believe otherwise, I would, for 

 my edification, like to hear it. 



Mr. Green: There is a gentleman 

 in the room that has spent the sum- 

 meT in the employ of Mr. Chapman. 



Mr. Hacker: I have spent a sum- 

 mer with Mr. Chapman. He has not 

 practiced that this summer, as Mr. 

 Holterman describes, but he has prac- 

 ticed this summer a little differently. 

 He has taken the old queen and four 

 frames of brood away and left the 

 unsealed brood and let it take care 

 of itself. The bees, of course, would 

 raise a queen there. But in some in- 

 stances the young queen has been 

 reared up in the super, and he shook 

 them down as Mr. Holterman has de- 

 scribed. 



Mr. Hutchinson: There is one point 

 there. Mr. Holterman, about the 

 swarming impulse. When you give 

 the queen plenty of room in all those 

 three or four stories there is not very 

 much chance of the swarming fever 

 to develop. 



Mr. Holterman: Are you still in 

 favor of letting a queen run through 

 three or four? 



Mr. Hutchinson: Up to a certain 

 point. The point I wish to speak of is 

 that plenty of room has the tendency 

 to keep down the swarming fever. If 

 we put in the queen excluding board 

 they build cells in those upper stories, 

 and do not have the swarming impulse 

 because those cells are shut away from 

 the queen. If they were built under 

 the swarming impulse I should think 

 perhaps they might swarm. 



Mr. Holterman: Mr. Hutchinson has 

 brought out another point which I 

 think is not sufficiently brought for- 

 ward among bee-keepers, and that is, 

 no matter what the means are, if you 

 shut off one portion — for instance, you 

 take a twelve frame or eight frame 

 hive and go to work and have that 

 crowded with brood, and take two 

 combs out of the center, and the flow 

 is pretty heavy, instead of putting 

 brood in there they are very apt to 

 fill those two combs with honey. That 

 creates a condition, where the queen 

 is not in, for the bees to be queenless 

 and they will rear a queen there. It 



is perfectly reasonable to say that is 

 not the swarming impulse and they 

 will not swarm under those conditions, 

 and yet I am perfectly satisfied that 

 I have had bees swarm as a result of 

 that; and so much has that been the 

 case, that in heavy flows I have had 

 to take brood from the brood chamber 

 and give them empty combs, because 

 they would fill part and rear queens in 

 the other part. 



Mr. Hershisher: Put plenty combs 

 on the outside. 



Mr. Holterman: If I did that they 

 would not be filled, either. I have not 

 been as successful as I would like to 

 be in the matter of taking out brood, 

 where there is a good flow, and put- 

 ting in other combs or foundation and 

 getting them to fill that with brood. 



Mr. Moe: Another feature ought 

 to be added to that. Different races 

 have different tendencies. My black 

 mongrels, among others, as a rule, do 

 not swarm until the first cell is capped 

 over; but my Italians will do it any 

 time they take a notion. It is "hip, 

 hip, hurrah," and away they go, that 

 is all there is to it. I would like to 

 ask Mr. Hutchinson as to his bees, if 

 the race makes any difference? I 

 "R'ould also like to ask him if he does 

 rear his young queens that way, if 

 they won't keep on destroying the 

 others till one is left? Then. I have 

 kept those virgin queens for a few 

 day.'!, with the old, but beyond the 

 fourth or fifth day you can't keep a 

 virgin queen very successfully; the bees 

 will do something or other. 



Mr. Hutchinson: Those bees were 

 all Italians and we extracted honey 

 after those queen excluders had been 

 in there about eighteen or nineteen 

 days, drawing upon the theory that 

 they were nest building those cells 

 when they were first put in; and those 

 young queens "we found there must 

 have been about three days old. How 

 much longer they might have lived 

 there I don't know. 



Mr. Hershisher: I think I can help 

 Mr. Holterman out a little on the 

 question of having empty combs filled 

 with honey. He has a twelve frame 

 hive. There are very few queens that 

 can keep twelve frames going in brood 

 all the time. If he had a ten or nine 

 frame hive he would have better suc- 

 cess. 



Mr. Holterman: Mr. Hershisher has 

 on different occasions been very anx- 

 ious to help me out. I have generally 



