46 



•MANAGEMENT or OUT-APIAEIES 



After a practice of ten years I find that it always pays to keep this 

 empty super of sections on top at all times when there is an expected 

 harvest, as it does no harm except the iittle labor of setting it on ; and 

 as often as one year in three much work will be done in it if it is not 

 filled entirely; and it has much to do with keeping the bees from laying 

 out or being crowded for room, thus doing away with their contracting 

 the swarming fever, as they are quite apt to do when the other supers 

 are nearing completion. Since using this method of keeping an empty 

 super on top I have not had a single swarm during the buckwheat flow, 

 without any further effort at their prevention, while before this I was 

 bothered with nearly half of the colonies contracting the swarming fever 

 during the first week of buckwheat bloom, they keeping the swarming 

 up till very little section honey would be obtained. • 



Before going to the apiary at this time I carefully look over the 

 standing of the bee-yard as to the value of the queens in the different 



DOOLITTLE'S POCKET QUEEN-CELL CAERIEB. 



hives, as it is given in the little squares on my record-board, and take 

 from the home apiary the number of ripe cells required for use in re- 

 queening all colonies having queens which do not come up to the stand- 

 ard of good queens. When the sections are all piled on the wheeJ- 

 barrow, as given above, from a colony having a queen not considered good 

 enough to winter over, I take the opportunity to hunt up the queen and 

 kill her, as she is quite easily found at this time on account of so many of 

 the bees being in the supers just taken off. 



Having found the queen and killed her, the next work is to give 

 them one of the ripe queen-cells I have brought.^ In taking them from 



1 Note that the date of this requeening is July 34. The young queen should begin 

 to lay early in August, reaching normal in egg-laying by about the middle of the 

 month, so that there would be about six weeks of egg-laying before brood-rearing is 

 suspended for winter in this locality. This is the ideal time for requeening here, since 

 the bees that survive the winter are chiefly those reared from eggs laid after the middle 

 of August. For any locality the young queen should begin to lay six or eight weeks 

 before brood-rearing is suspended in the fall, for best results as to young bees for 

 winter. 



