Part 3

Mr. EDITOR:--I wish, with your permission, to correct some few errors which have appeared in the Journal with regard to the Thomas hive in Canada.

Mr. J. H. Thomas, in the July number of the Journal, says--“It is the principal hive in use in Canada.” Again, in the correspondence of the Bee Journal, September No., page 71, Mr. H. Lipset says--“The Thomas hive is all the go in Ontario.” How is it that men will make such extravagant statements? Now for a few facts, as the bee-men say.

One of my neighbors, an intelligent and scientific bee-keeper, having been bred to the business, received a hive from Mr. Thomas, and after giving it four or five years’ trial, says he would not use the hives if he could get them for nothing.

A Mr. Conger, of this county, whose son was an agent for the Thomas hive, told me lately that he had thrown the Thomas hive aside, in favor of a hive similar to Langstroth’s shallow form.

Mr. Walter Taylor, of Fitzroy Harbor, Ontario, formerly an agent for the Thomas hive, wrote me last winter that he would get his bees out of the Thomas hive as soon as possible, as he had found the shallow Langstroth hive was “just the thing.”

I know of no person, making bee-keeping a “business,” who uses the Thomas hive. After all, the Canadian bee-keepers ought to feel proud of having a man among them who has produced the “best bee hive in America.” Where are Dr. Conklin, D. L. Adair, and J. M. Price with his revolvable, reversible--and so on to the end of the chapter? Echo answers--nowhere!

This has been a good year for bees in this part of Ontario. Yet a man living five miles from here, and using the Thomas hive, says it has been a very bad season.

I commenced in the spring with forty-five hives, several of them being very weak from want of honey. I now have eighty-seven good stocks and sixteen hundred (1600) pounds of box honey, besides about ten frames full. Two stocks that did not swarm produced eighty-five (85) pounds each, of box honey. My first swarm of the season, which came off June 13th and was put in an empty hive, stored sixty-six (66) pounds of honey in boxes, besides losing a frame of honey which melted down with the extreme heat which prevailed this summer.

The foregoing, of course, does not come up to the big stories we read in the Journal; but it is very good for this section of Ontario, and pays very well.

My hives contain nine frames, 16¾ inches long and 8½ inches deep, inside. The frames run from front to rear. The hive is similar in shape to Langstroth’s shallow form. I obtain earlier swarms and more surplus honey than any other person in these parts using a deeper form of hive. While I put boxes on the top I would not use any other form of hive. I think that Alley’s new style of Langstroth hive is the best for obtaining surplus honey in boxes that was ever invented. I constructed two hives last year, as an experiment, similar to Mr. Alley’s. One of these gave me the sixty-six pounds before mentioned.

W. Baker, in the September correspondence of the Journal, says that his bees swarmed without making any preparation. Many of mine did the same thing this summer. In opposition to this, on examining a hive five days after a swarm left it, I found a laying queen, and from the number of eggs I saw, I should think she had been laying twenty-four hours at least.

In looking over the Bee Journal, I am surprised to see that so many bee-keepers still use a pan of chips, old rags, rotten wood, &c., with which to smoke their bees. I use a pipe, which for convenience and efficiency, I think cannot be surpassed, notwithstanding Mr. Thomas to the contrary. It consists of a tin tube, six inches long and one inch in diameter, having a funnel soldered to the inside, about 1½ inches from one end, as shown in the annexed figure:

The funnel or cone is punched full of small holes. Into each end of the tube a bored plug, _a_ and _b_, is nicely fitted. The plug _b_ is cut so as to be easily held between the teeth. To get the smoke, draw out the plug _b_, fill the space _c_ with some combustible material, then with the plug _a_ in the mouth, it may be lighted with a match, like a common pipe. When lighted, insert the plug _b_ in its place, and blow away. I have used cut tobacco till lately, but now find dry corn silk much better. The advantage of this pipe is, that it can be held in the mouth, and the smoke directed where it is wanted, while the hands are free to operate with. This is a great convenience, especially in taking off boxes.

GEORGE CORK.

_Bloomfield, Ontario._

[For the American Bee Journal.]

Shallow Hives, or Deep?

Mr. EDITOR:--In the September number of the Journal, Dr. B. Puckett criticises an article of mine in the July number, and asks me to explain wherein the shallow Langstroth hive is lacking.

When I wrote the article referred to, my object was to show that the shallow hive could be altered to a different form, and that those who were using it, and considered it too shallow, need not throw their hives away. I said it was _not_ a good hive for wintering in the open air, or for early spring. I did not think it necessary to give my reasons in detail, why it was not good; for that matter I considered had been already fully discussed in the Journal. But as Dr. P. requests it, I will explain.

For wintering in a cellar, the hive is perhaps good enough. But I do not want to be _obliged_ to house my bees. Sometimes I have plenty of room in the cellar, and sometimes not. If the hives are of suitable form for wintering in the open air, I can let them remain out, when it is not convenient to carry them in. But the great objection to them is in early spring. Dr. P. asks if it is the fault of the hive that the _old_ bees die off, or that bees are destroyed by cold winds? Of course it is not. But if a swarm is not breeding enough to make up that loss, there must be a fault somewhere. When we take bees from the cellar, we expect that they will have brood in all stages, from the egg just laid to young bees just gnawing out. We expect too that the queen will continue to deposit eggs, even more rapidly, because of the excitement produced by the bees flying, and especially if they are fed rye meal, as mine always are. I said, after they had been out _a month_, there appeared to be fewer bees than when first carried out. We expect a loss the first day or two after taking them out, but soon afterward, the bees should be increasing; and at the end of a month, which brings it into April, there should be a decided increase. In deeper hives, according to my experience, it is so; and the deeper the hive the greater the increase.

The reason why the shallow hive is not good for early spring, as I understand, is this: as soon as severe weather is past, we want to confine the animal heat as much as possible to the hive, that the bees may breed rapidly. Consequently we shut off all upward ventilation. The coldest part of a hive is near the entrance and so along the bottom board. The farther the bees get from the bottom, the warmer they find the temperature. These hives being so low, before the bees get out of the way of the cold air coming in at the entrance, they are bumping their heads against the top. And, instead of spreading the brood in a circle, which is the best form to economise heat, they are obliged to carry it along horizontally, and after all work at a disadvantage.

In a tall hive they can draw up and get well out of the way of the cold air from the entrance. The top of the hive being small, _the animal heat_, _brood_, and bees are all compact, and in the best condition for rapid breeding. The faster they breed, the faster they can breed, as there are more bees to keep up the heat; and as it naturally ascends, the smaller the hive is across the top, the more compact the heat will be kept.

A friend, who for some years has been using a very tall hive, after trying for a long time to persuade me to use some of them, finally gave me one in the spring of 1868, and requested me to put a swarm into it. Says he--“You may let it stand anywhere through the winter; the bees will be sure to do well.” I have used it, and found that the bees increase in it nearly twice as fast in April and May, as in the shallow hive. The result is the same in his apiary.

Mr. Alley, who at one time so vigorously advocated the shallow hive, has since become convinced of his error, and invented what he calls the new style Langstroth hive. The shallow frames are set up endwise, which gives it extreme depth. In the September number of the Journal, 1869, page 54, he says--“I examined fifty stocks of bees in shallow hives last spring (and many of these were larger colonies than any I had); but none of them had as much sealed brood as mine.”

When he first got up this hive, and before any of them had been used, a friend of his had one, and was requested by Mr. A. to show it to me and get my opinion upon it, not letting me know where it came from. I refused to express an opinion, except on the point of wintering, in which I considered it could not be beat.

The great depth of combs, together with the protection given by the outer case, makes it one of the best hives for wintering that I have seen. It has a large amount of box room for surplus honey, which is needed for a swarm that has been well wintered, and that has increased well during the spring. But let him just turn the frames down to a horizontal position, making it a shallow hive, and I will guarantee that one-half of the box room will be ample.

I have attempted to explain wherein the shallow hive is lacking, and now have a favor to ask of Dr. P. He says: “The Langstroth hive could be made deeper very easily, without Mr. R.’s patchwork.” Will he tell us how it can be done, and still retain about the same number of cubic inches?

CALVIN ROGERS.

_West Newberry, Mass._, September 10, 1870.

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Honey is the most elaborate of all vegetable productions.

[For the American Bee Journal.]

Wintering Bees.

We republish the following from the A. B. J., Vol. IV., page 109, at the request of a number of new subscribers. We regard it as probably the least troublesome and most successful mode of out-door wintering yet devised.

It is settled beyond a doubt in my own mind, by the experience of others as related in the BEE JOURNAL, and by my own experience for several years in the apiary, that bees to winter well, must have sufficient ventilation to carry off the excessive moisture which accumulates in well stocked hives. This moisture arises partly from the exhalations from the bodies of the bees, but mostly, I think, from the surrounding atmosphere, which constantly holds in suspense a greater or less amount of moisture, according as its temperature is higher or lower. The warm atmosphere of the hive is capable of holding a considerable quantity, until it is condensed by coming in contact with the cold walls of the hive, at some distance from the cluster of bees. There it condenses, first into minute drops of moisture, and afterwards, if the cold increases, into frost. The constant accumulation of the quantity, by repeated thawing and freezing in a hive that has no efficient means of ventilation, gradually encroaches on the space occupied by the bees, finally reaching those on the outside of the cluster. These grow benumbed, cease to eat, lose their vitality, grow cold, the frost forms on their bodies, and they die where they stand. The frost continues to penetrate the cluster, if the cold weather is prolonged, until finally the last bee dies covered with frost. The warm days of spring then melt this frost, and on examination, the whole mass of bees are found dead and as wet as if just dipped from a basin of water. I found one hive in that condition last spring. The entrance to this hive was left open, but the honey-board was left on tight, without any upward ventilation, as an experiment. All my other colonies wintered well on their summer stands, having their entrances open three or four inches wide, and the front and rear openings in the honey-boards (half an inch wide, and extending the whole length of the hive) uncovered, but the middle opening closed.

For the coming winter I have adopted Mr. Langstroth’s plan with some modifications. I shall omit the outside covering of the hive, believing that it is better to have the hive of a single thickness of board, say seven-eighths of an inch, in order that the heat of the sun may easily penetrate it, and warm up the hive almost daily, thus giving the bees an opportunity to bring to the central part of the hive fresh supplies of food from the outer combs. This plan _may_ lead to a somewhat greater consumption of honey; but if a swarm of bees will give its owner from fifty to one hundred pounds of surplus honey in a season, as mine have done the past summer, he ought to be entirely willing to have them eat all they need during the winter. At all events, one of two things must be done, to winter bees successfully, in addition to their having a supply of food and thorough ventilation--they must either be kept in a repository where frost cannot enter, as a cellar, trench, ice-house, or the like; or they must be put where the sun can warm them up occasionally.

I have removed all the honey-boards, placed two one-half or three-quarter inch strips across the frames, and covered the whole top of the frames with any old woollen garments that could be found about the house.[3] These need no cutting or fitting. Pack them in as you would pack a trunk, (the roof or cover of my top box is movable, and I like it much better than the old plan of having it nailed on,) two, three, or half a dozen thicknesses will make no difference. The moisture will pass through as readily as the insensible perspiration of our bodies will pass through our bed covering. The hives will remain dry and the bees warm. I have no fear of losing a single swarm the coming winter, although several new ones which I bought are quite weak, owing to the sudden close of the honey harvest a month earlier than last year, in consequence of the drought.

R. BICKFORD.

_Seneca Falls, N. Y._, Oct., 1868.

[For the American Bee Journal.]

Upward Ventilation.

MR. EDITOR:--I once found a bee-tree, with an excellent swarm in it. I cut it down Gallup-fashion, and moved it home, in the month of February. The entrance was a hole, about three inches in diameter, just at the top of the cavity. The tree was a green butternut. I sawed it off, short enough to handle easy, and set it up in the yard. The combs were bright and clean, and there were not over a dozen dead bees in it when found. It swarmed twice in June following, and next winter I stopped up the entrance at the top, and made another within six inches of the bottom, by boring a two-inch hole through the side. All this time I kept the top closed tight. The following winter I came near losing them with dampness and dysentery. Next winter, I closed up the auger hole, and opened the top entrance again. They wintered as nice as a pin--no dampness or dysentery. In April I thought I could still better their condition, by making the entrance smaller, and reduced the entrance to one inch in diameter. Within six days after, I came near losing them with dampness and mould. Experimenting still further, I noticed that the fanners or ventilating bees would, in hot weather, be arranged in this manner--one set at the lower edge of the entrance, with their heads outward; the other set at the top of the entrance, facing inward, driving out the hot air. I then reduced the size of the entrance still more, and found that in a very short time nearly the entire swarm would issue and cluster on the outside of the log or gum. Enlarging the hole to three inches again, the bees would soon return inside and resume work. I kept that log hive four years, and then sold it to a neighbor. Whenever I wintered it with the natural entrance open, there was no dysentery and no unnatural distention of the abdomen; and on their first flight in the spring, they would not even speck the snow.

In wintering bees in the Wellhuysen hive, made of willows and plastered with cow manure, they would never have the dysentery--not the least sign of it. The combs were always bright and clean, and the bees always in as good condition as they were in midsummer. I have wintered bees in Canada, in the old-fashioned straw hive, with the entrance, summer and winter, a two-inch hole in the centre at top; and they always wintered well, without the least sign of dysentery, even when they would not leave the hive from the 10th of October to the 1st of May--nearly eight months. In that climate they are nearly always confined from the 1st of November to the 10th or 20th of April, or about five months. When I lived there, there was scarcely ever any honey stored after the 15th of August, yet bee-keeping pays in that climate. To encourage our northern bee-keepers, I will say that, according to my experience, there and in the West, I think the flowers secrete more honey, in the same length of time, there than here. Our atmosphere is rather dry, while theirs is moist and humid--just right for the secretion of honey.

ELISHA GALLUP.

_Orchard, Iowa._

[For the American Bee Journal.]

Alley’s Improved Langstroth Hive.

MR. EDITOR:--For twenty years I have had experience in bee-keeping, and had within that time as many different styles of bee-hives in my apiary; but, taking everything into consideration, the advantages derived from Mr. Alley’s, proves it to be the best I have yet seen. It has the best shape, the greatest amount of animal heat for wintering bees, and as for storing honey, it allows as much room for surplus honey as the largest stock would need.

These are only two among the many advantages it presents. Many more might be mentioned. I simply state these, as I consider them the most important. Brother bee-keepers, who are about to purchase, should not fail to give it a trial.

LEVI FISH.

_Danvers, Mass._, Sept. 10, 1870.

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Intelligent practice is very different from blind practice; or, in other words, practice preceded by a sound theory is evidently far superior to practice without theory.--TALBOT.

[For the American Bee Journal.]

Ventilating the Gallup Hive in a Damp Cellar.

The cellar of my house is nearly underground. Its size is 38 × 28 × 7 feet, inside measure. The temperature during the winter is usually 38° F., with occasional extremes of 35° and 41°. It is damp, and not specially ventilated. A stairway from the porch and one from the kitchen, furnish all the air; the latter being very much used during winter time. In this cellar I have usually wintered some of my bees, for many years--trying various methods and different kinds of hives, with the result always, till last winter, of more or less mouldy combs. I then had among the lot four strong stocks and Gallup hives. These I had setting up three feet from the ground, with caps and honey-boards removed, and the loose top cover laid directly on the hives; and by means of hard wood wedges pushed in between the lower edges of the hives and the bottom-boards, and also between the upper edges and the top covers, I gave them one-eighth of an inch air all round the hives, above and below, except six inches in length at the entrance, where I gave them one-fourth of an inch, so that the bees could get out. In this condition the hives were left all winter. The bees remained very quiet, humming almost inaudibly, and paying little attention to the light of a candle which was carried in many times a day. Scarcely any came out to die; and not over half a teacupful died in each hive. They consumed comparatively little honey, and when the hives were examined after being set out in the spring, the combs were all dry and free from mould. In my experience absorbents used on a hive in a cellar have always caused combs to mould. Who would think of laying on top of his hives a damp straw mat, or a pile of damp corncobs? And yet it is all about the same thing. Give the proper amount of air, and let it pass off unobstructed. I shall try a larger number of hives the coming winter. Many thanks to Gallup.

HENRY CRIST.

_Lake P. O., Stark county, Ohio_, Oct. 4, 1870.

[For the American Bee Journal.]

Bee Hives, and Shipping Honey in Frames.

There has been much said on hives in the columns of the Bee Journal. Some are said to be too deep, and others too shallow. But after all, profit in dollars and cents is the great object; and to secure this in the shape of surplus honey, three things are requisite--_first_, strong colonies of bees; _second_, a good season with plenty of pasturage; and, _third_, the placing your surplus honey boxes or frames as near as possible to the brood in the main body of the hive. There are two ways to accomplish this: _first_, by using the shallow form of hive, with frames say seven or eight inches in depth; and, _second_, by using the side gathering or storing hive. I prefer the latter, with frames twelve inches deep; and this for three reasons. _First_, if the apiarian has no repository for winter quarters, his bees are right in these for wintering in the open air. _Second_, the brood and cards of honey can be so adjusted as to bring the former next to your honey boxes, if necessary; as we never want more than one full frame of honey between the brood and the surplus honey boxes or frames. _Third_, in the manipulation of colonies there is no comparison between the side storing hive, and the top storing. With the former, when the lid is removed, we have access to the frames, without the intervention of surplus honey or other boxes. Top-storing hives are now behind the age.

Those using shallow frames must, in this latitude and climate, have a house for wintering their colonies, and when bees are removed to their summer stands in the spring, the lid that covers the second-story or surplus honey chamber, should fit on the brood chamber, that the honey chamber may be left off till the time comes for placing surplus honey boxes on your hives. By this means all the heat rising from the bees is secured and diffused through the main hive or brooding chamber for hatching the eggs; and the bees multiply as rapidly for aught I can see, and swarm as early as in the twelve inch frames. I have used one hundred shallow hives, with frames eight inches in depth, for three years; and when I suffer them to throw off natural swarms, they swarm as early, sending off as many and as large swarms as taller hives.

In 1869, I had gathered six thousand pounds of fine surplus honey in frames in the top receptacles of my shallow hives. A large proportion of this I shipped, in the frames, to C. O. Perrine & Co., Chicago, Ills. They paid me twenty-five cents per pound for it, frames and all. Should any honey raisers in the West wish to sell to a good man, I should recommend them to Mr. Perrine. I have trusted him with quite large amounts at a time, and always found all right at settlement day.

SHIPPING HONEY IN FRAMES.

To do this properly and safely make the box or case in which you ship only wide enough to receive the length of the top bar of your frames, and one and a half inch deeper than the depth of the frame. Make the case tight and pitch the inside with rosin and bees wax, so that the leakage of the combs will not be lost.