190 FORTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES. 



I look through the colonies in the spring to clip any 

 queen that may have whole wings, I find very little use 

 for the scissors if the previous season was very poor, 

 whereas after a big honey-yield I generally find a good 

 deal of clipping to do. In other words, there seems to 

 be more superseding at the close of a good than of a 

 poor year. Has it only happened to come so, or does a 

 good harvest wear out the queen faster? 



THE ''jumbo" hive. 



At one time I had strong hopes that by the use of a 

 large hive with a large frame I might greatly diminish, 

 if not entirely suppress, swarming. Others reported 

 success with what was called the Jumbo hive. At Fig. 

 67 will be seen one of these hives. The frame is 2]/^ 

 inches deeper than the regular Langstroth frame, and if 

 you will look at the front of the hive in the picture, you 

 will see that it is 2}i inches higher than the 8-frame 

 dovetailed hive by its side. The Jumbo has 10 frames, 

 and the extra depth makes it equivalent to a 12-frame 

 Langstroth. 



I put bees in two of these hives in the home apiary, 

 and waited to see what would result the next summer 

 with much interest. The very first colony to send out a 

 swarm was in one of these Jumbo hives ! I was sorry, 

 but it didn't make me sick abed. I had become hardened 

 to failures and disappointments in following after the 

 will-o'-the-wisp — non-swarming. 



PILES OF STORIES. 



The problem of prevention of swarming would be 

 very much easier if I were running for extracted honey 

 instead of comb. I am very much of the opinion that I 

 could pile up stories as in Fig. 68, and not have one 

 colony in a hundred swarm, the fact that no such pile 



