8 The Townsend Bee Book 
my opinion that he had begun at the top of the ladder instead of 
the bottom, and his failure would be almost certain. The change 
from the ten-frame size to the twelve-frame size may be advisable 
whenever one has mastered the situation, so that the ten-frame 
hive has become too small to hold his colonies at the opening of 
the flow. The location must always be considered in this connec- 
tion; for if the main honey-flow began only 90 days from the time 
the first natural pollen is gathered, a hive with at least two more 
Langstroth-sized frames could be used than would be advisable 
if the main honey-flow began only 60 days after the first pollen 
was gathered in our location here. 
Mr. S. D. Chapman, of Mancelona, Mich., is one of the most 
successful beekeepers in Michigan, as he has beekeeping ‘‘ under 
his thumb.’’ He winters his bees in four cellars, and brings them 
through the winter and spring very strong, so that, long before 
the 60-days breeding season is ended, he is obliged to allow addi- 
tional room for the queen to lay, and also for clustering space in 
order to keep the bees from swarming before the honey-flow. Two 
of Mr. Chapman’s cellars are under his dwelling house, a third is 
an elaborate special repository, and the fourth is one not so ex- 
pensive. One of the cellars under the dwelling house is under a 
part of the house where a fire is kept going most of the time; and 
these colonies must be set out in the spring earlier than any of 
the others. All of this shows that the man and not the cellar 
should have the credit where the colonies are successfully wintered 
in four cellars of different design and construction, necessitating 
different methods of handling, ete. 
Good wintering in the Northern States is one of the supreme 
tests of a successful beekeeper; and the inability of many of the 
northern men to winter their colonies so they will breed up and 
fill large hives in the short period between the breeding season in 
spring and the main flow in June is the reason that most of them 
prefer a small hive. 
For 18 years I had 50 ten-frame Quinby hives in use. These 
were chaff hives with the regular thickness of packing around the 
sides, top, and bottom in winter; but the best I could do was to 
get the colonies in these large hives in condition for the honey-flow 
about July 1, when in our locality the white-clover flow would be 
nearly over. At the same time I was having good success with 
the thirteen-frame Gallup hive, and so I took out the two outside 
frames of the Quinby hive, reducing it to the eight-frame size, 
which equaled in space the thirteen-frame Gallup hive, except 
that the frames ran the other way. These two hives gave good 
