254 
CONTRACTION 
FURTHER CONTRACTION OF THE EIGHT- 
FRAME HIVE. 
This time the brood-chamber was re¬ 
duced from eight frames to five frames. 
This contraction was done by some at the 
beginning of the honey flow when the 
comb-honey supers were put on and by 
others only when hiving swarms; but since 
most of the strong colonies swarmed and 
the weak ones had to be contracted to in¬ 
duce them to work in the supers, most of 
the colonies were contracted to five frames 
at some time during the season, the con- 
tractionist advising that parent colonies be 
contracted to five frames and supplied with 
a super in order to utilize them as well as 
the swarm in honey production. 
At this time many of the leaders in bee¬ 
keeping in this country considered five 
frames to be sufficient capacity for the 
brood-chamber except during the period of 
heaviest brood-rearing just previous to the 
honey flow from clover when the brood- 
chamber was temporarily expanded to eight 
frames. These things were taught in the 
beekeeping literature at the time; and at 
a beekeepers’ convention held in Chicago 
in 1893 when the question was asked as to 
the proper size for the brood-chamber for 
comb-honey production, it was found that 
the majority of those present favored a 
brood-chamber of five or six frames capac¬ 
ity. 
POOR SEASONS FOLLOWED REDUCTION IN 
SIZE OF BROOD-CHAMBER. 
It is not surprising that the beekeeping 
industry suffered a period of severe depres¬ 
sion at about this time, for the small hives 
and severe contraction of that period, to¬ 
gether with the gradual elimination of 
basswood and fall flowers, made the exist¬ 
ence of colonies of bees a precarious one 
indeed unless much feeding was prac¬ 
ticed. The series of so-called poor sea¬ 
sons in the clover regions which followed 
the contraction fad almost wrecked the 
industry in this excellent honey-producing 
region, and looking back now it seems re¬ 
markable that beekeeping has even partial¬ 
ly recovered from the terrible setback of 
that time. 
In November, 1891, Hutchinson wrote in 
the editorial columns of the Beekeepers’ 
Review as follows: “In 1888 the average 
yield in my apiary was 10 pounds per col¬ 
ony. In 1889 it was 20 pounds; in 1890 
not one pound; in 1891, five pounds. * * 
* * The honey stored in my apiary the 
past four years would not have kept us in 
food more than one year. Tam forced to 
believe that hundreds of beekeepers could 
make a similar report.” After some re- 
,marks about the changes in his location, 
brought about by better agricultural meth¬ 
ods, he continues: “What puzzles me is 
that we had good crops for ten years, then 
poor crops for four years. It seems as 
tho the change ought to have been more 
gradual.” 
POOR SEASONS CAUSED BY LACK OF STRONG 
COLONIES. 
That the management was more at fault 
than the seasons was well brought out in 
the same journal the next month by Tay¬ 
lor, who wrote as follows: “In my home 
apiary the past season, I had one swarm 
for about every 25 colonies, an average of 
about five pounds of comb honey to the 
colony. But there was one colony that 
cast a swarm and gave a surplus of 75 
pounds of comb honey over and above suf¬ 
ficient winter stores for the two colonies. 
* * * * There was no accession of bees 
from other colonies nor any robbing. 
Wherein was the power of this colony? 
Was it from the fortuitous conjunction of 
conditions at the most favorable times so 
as to produce extraordinary exertion at the 
nick of time? Did it possess a secret 
knowledge of some rich acre of clover in 
a sunny nook? Or was it possessed of 
inbred characteristics which gave it pow¬ 
ers to excel? If in the first or last, as 
seems most likely, we have in them a rich 
field for exploration. He who finds out 
how to time the conjunction of conditions 
and to perpetuate the most desirable char¬ 
acteristics will abolish poor seasons, not 
simply find a doubtful remedy therefor.” 
Early the next year the same writer re¬ 
vealed this desirable “conjunction of condi¬ 
tions, which has since played such an im¬ 
portant part in “abolishing poor seasons,” 
in the following significant statement: “In 
the leanest of the late lean years, every 
colony that cast a swarm as soon as the 
first opening of the white clover has given 
me more than an average amount of sur- 
