CHAPTER III 



Apparatus of the South. 



CONTRARY to what might be expected, the needs of the 

 beekeeper in the South are quite similar to the needs of a 

 beekeeper in the North. There is no style of hive which 

 has proved better for all conditions in the South than the stand- 

 ard ten-frame hive sold by all manufacturers. If there is any 

 pointed difference in the needs of the South so far as a hive is 

 concerned, it is that the hive should not be too small. The 

 author was rather surprised to find at first that the ten-frame 

 hive was perhaps more widely distributed and used in the South 

 than elsewhere in the country. Probably the reason for this is 

 because extracted honey is almost universally produced through- 

 out the South among commercial honey producers. This is 

 probably due to the difference in intensity in the nectar flows, 

 especially in the more tropical South, where longer, lighter 

 secretions of nectar are common. However, there are many 

 locations in the South where comb honey is produced and many 

 where it ought to be produced, in view of the fact that comb 

 honey always brings an average higher price in normal tim.es, 

 than extracted honey. Even for comb honey there is no neces- 

 sity for reducing the size of the brood chamber for southern bee- 

 keeping. 



Another factor which has probably tended to gradually in- 

 crease the use of the large brood chamber in the South, is that in 

 most cases more honey is consumed by a colony of bees during 

 southern winters than would be the case, say in Illinois. This 

 is not due to cold weather, but on the contrary, to the warmer 

 winter, during a great part of which some brood rearing may 

 be carried on and the stores thus be rapidly depleted. There are 

 many locations in the South where the honey contained in one 

 ten-frame brood chamber in the fall will seldom sustain a colony 

 until the next year's surplus nectar ifows. This is true of the 



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