ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



161 



present in all cases — smoking and 

 handling frames for various purposes. 

 Hence the logical conclusion wa» 

 that if we are given the first four fac- 

 tors, and supply the last two in a 

 proper manner, we would achieve suc- 

 cess. I experimented quite extensive- 

 ly by extracting every ten days and 

 comparing results with colonies let 

 alone. I made quite complete notes 

 and records of these, but they were 

 destroyed by fire that also destroyed 

 nearly all my apiary and fixtures. 

 Recently I have gone back to my old 

 love and have demonstrated to niy 

 own satisfaction that judicious "shak- 

 ing" gives me the "added pound," 

 which means a profit. I tried it uu a 

 small scale last year and it gave me 

 quite a nice margin over my other 

 yards where I did not use it so freely. 

 I planned to use it in all my yards 

 this year, and in fact did in a small 

 way ; but as Adrian Getaz says in the 

 Review: It was a complete failure. 

 The bees I shook did not net me more 

 than five pounds per colony, and that 

 badly colored with honey dew, but as 

 none of the others not shaken did any 

 better, I eliminated again and found 

 the common factor of failure to be in 

 the drought last fall which killed the 

 clover, so we must not blame the 

 shaking for the failure or for the 

 honey dew either, as one critic tries 

 to do. 



Do not make the mistake of think- 

 ing that shaking your bees will cause 

 them to gather honey when none is 

 secreted by the flowers, as it surely 

 will not. Neither is it very valuable 

 the first few days of a flow, unless 

 you wish to introduce a queen, move 

 your bees or they will" not enter the 

 sections, but when the first spasm of 

 work is over and the hive is pretty 

 well filled with brood and honey, and 

 they begin to be dilatory, then is 

 when the shaking will count big, and 

 the heavier and longer the fiow the 

 more value it is to you. If you are a 

 bee-keeper worthy of the name, you 

 will not put in overtime stimulating 

 the little fellows to their best effort, 

 and gain dollars by it, too. Do not 

 imagine that shaking where the bees 

 run back on the old combs will dis- 

 courage swarming, for it will not. It 

 stimulates brood rearing and thereby 

 tends to promote swarming or in- 

 crease. But as Kipling has it, 

 "Swarming is another tale." 



I find I can increase largely of a 

 good season and not sacrifice any 

 honey whatever, rather increase it if 

 anything, by judicious shaking. This 

 is quite a big item for me, as I am en- 

 larging my yards and increasing their 

 number. 



The value of shaking lies in its sim- 

 plicity. A novice can readily master 

 the few manipulations required, and a 

 bee-master can thus multiply himself 

 indefinitely. While there are other 

 and different ways of doing many of 

 the things that bring success, shaking 

 has proven to me to be the best way 

 of doing most of them. But, after all, 

 success depends largely on a good 

 flow and the judgment of the bee- 

 master and the watchful care and 

 faithfulness of his assistants. 



The Vice President — You have heard 

 the paper as read by Dr. Phillips on 

 "Shaking Energy into Bees." Now, it 

 is open for discussion. How many 

 have had any experience with this 

 question? (Nine members raised 

 their hands.) 



Mr. Brown — My experience has been 

 that it was not merely the fact of 

 juggling up the bees that could really 

 be called shaking, at the same time 

 I think that helped; but the plan w^e 

 worked was — I didn't think of it as 

 shaking up the bees at the time — ^we 

 used to go over the yards about every 

 two weeks and commence at one cor- 

 ner of the yard, and go over the full' 

 number of colonies that were in that 

 yard, and spread the brood to a cer- 

 tain extent in the spring, or remove a 

 few frames that were filled with 

 honey, using that brood to build up 

 some other colony. As we would go 

 over them we would get things ready 

 for the honey flow, and just before 

 it started we would put on our uppers. 

 After the uppers had been on a cer- 

 tain length of time we went through 

 and took out a few frames of brood 

 for the purpose of building up new 

 colonies for helping some of the weak 

 ones along, and holding some of the 

 others back from swarming. If they 

 began to get clogged up with honey 

 we would go through the yard and 

 take out from every hive from one to 

 four frames of nearly capped honey 

 in the centre of the hive. There was 

 one yard that was pretty large, and 

 we could not get over it very welL 

 It took us a day to go there and a 

 day to come back, and we would run 



