BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
(Cracks or gaps that may exist between supers, especially when they have seen some 25 years of use, are readily stopped with a little wet clay. The Europeans use cow dung mixed with
Figure 11: Using mud to close gaps between stories made by the hive tool on supers long in use.
the clay. It makes a stronger cement. Beginners, with new lives, may laugh at the makesbifts of the practical beekeeper. But the time comes when they find themselves compelled to use similar makeshifts.
Figure 42: Method of lifting supers to put on escape-board
It is well, in very hot weather, in our latitude, to avoid leaving those unoccupied supers on the hives during the hot part of the day, as the heat might cause the combs to break down, the bees being no longer there to ventiate and lower the temperature of the super.
If the crop is still on, no precautions need be taken in returning the supers to the colonies. In fact, it is necessary that they be returned as promptly as possible, for the bees are idle meanwhile, **if the** brood chamber is full. So we make due haste in returning them as fast as emptied of their honey. We saw, during an excellent honey harvest, supers that had been emptied two days before again supplied with fresh honey in every cell. Such harvests are rare, however.
If we have a number of spare supers, we save some trouble by making an exchange, putting on the empty supers as fast as the full ones are removed. Very often, however, in a bountiful harvest, all spare supers have been given to the bees before extracting began. A half dozen, sometimes, are retained from the first colonies harvested, to exchange for full supers as we go along.
If the season is at end, we pile all the supers, as fast as emptied of their honey, in the honey house until evening. A short time before sunset, those supers are returned quickly, everybody helping, to the colonies from which they were taken. This prevents the excitement of their return from lasting long enough to cause robbing, since night prevents further hustling on the part of the excited bees. When morning comes again, everything is quiet.
If the honey is not well ripened, we use honey tanks to store it. But as we have numerous outapiaries and the honey might not be safe in tanks away from the home yard, we use alcohol barrels of good quality and thoroughly dry, to contain the crop. These are emptied at leisure, in vessels of different capacity, as occasion requires.
It is sometimes necessary to haul the supers to the home apiary or central plant, to do the extracting. The writer does not like this method as well as that of local extracting. Yet it undoubtedly has some advantages that cannot be secured in local extracting, because of greater facilities. Each apiarist must decide this for himself. Our principal objection to it is in the necessity of hauling the supers back and forth and the fact that the honey cools and thickens after being removed from the hives and is more difficult to extract. Some beekeepers who use a central plant find it necessary to heat the room overnight, at least, to warm up the honey for extracting.
Figure 43: First honey extractor of Hruschka. The infancy of the development of centrifugal force
after the cut given in the American Bee Journal, Volume 3, page 189. Our local timer was employed to make the tub, of strong tin instead of wood. The blacksmith made the basket
Figure 45: Uncapping at a single stroke of the knife owing to the proper depth of super frames
frame, and a churn gear furnished the power. But the fly netting which we employed as screen for the baskets was too flimsy and allowed the combs to bulge in the baskets, so as to break. Add to this the fact that we did not yet have super frames but had to extract from full-sized brood combs, that our combs were not very straight in the frames, since comb foundation was not yet in use, and you will realize how much trouble it was to extract honey in the pioneer days.
But the honey was splendid--what we did secure--so much so that the first dealer to whom we offered it replied very tartly that he did not want any sugar syrup; that whenever he did want some, he could make it himself; that he knew honey when he saw it and had never seen any that light in color.
The coarseness of the extractor was not the only disagree
Figure 46: Kobber Cloth and pan protect the supers from robbers during extracting
able feature of the newly discovered method. We had no utensils for handling the honey and cappings. A bucher knife, later a thin-bladed knife, served as uncapping knife, and we can still remember the relief brought to the work by the invention of the Bingham knife, whose beveled edge kept the cappings from sticking again to the combs, after having been shaved off. An ordinary dishpan served us for several seasons, as a capping can. This had to be emptied, every few hours, into a sieve with side-boards, draining over a 5-gallon earthen jar.
After 4 or 5 years of this infantile and ridiculous method, or lack of method, we decided to have a large strainer built which would hold the cappings of a whole day's extracting. Manufacturers of honey extractors had then come into being and we ordered from one of them a can of the same size as an extractor can, with another can inside of it. The latter can had a screen instead of a bottom and was ten inches shallower than the outer can, its bottom resting on a pivot in the center of the outer can and its upper edge on the inner edge of it. This was the "capping can," named "Dadant uncapping can" by dealers, which is now often replaced by a long trough with double screened bottom in theoneyhouse. We prefer the capping can to any other implement for holding cappings, because it may be transported like an extractor, because it is light and easily cleaned. Some such implement
Figure 47: The Original Capping can is still in use in the Dadant Apiaries
should be used. We have several of them, so that we can allow the cappings to drain dry.
We do not like the capping melter sold by dealers, which heats the cappings enough to melt the combs and separate the wax from the honey as fast as harvested. True, it does fast work, but it colors the honey, injures its flavor, and produces too much heat at a time when the weather is already as hot as the apiarist can endure.
We find no trouble in handling the cappings. The honey falling with them into the capping-can drains more readily if the fresh cappings are well stirred about every half hour. This stirring with a sharp, clean, firm slat or stick breaks them up into small bits and greatly aids the draining of the honey. After 24 to 48 hours of draining, they are emptied into a barrel of which one head has been removed. When the season is over, we may have several barrels of these cappings and the entire lot is rendered at one time into beesvax. There is no loss of quality in the capping honey and the wax rendering is done in one operation. Sometimes we wash these cappings preparatory to rendering them. The sweet water thus secured is made into mead or vinegar. Nothing is lost.
The amount of cappings secured from a given amount of extracted honey we find to be about 1 per cent. So when we have a crop of 50,000 pounds of extracted honey, we can figure on approximately 500 pounds of the finest quality of beesvax, after it has been rendered and purified. We used to get a larger amount of cappings. That was when the combs were crooked, or more or less wavy, before we used full sheets of comb-foundation. It was also more difficult to do the uncapping. We use also a less number of combs in the super than in the brood chamber. At first, when the bees are given the plain sheets of foundation in the super, it is necessary to have the same number of combs as in the brood-chamber. But after they are built, they may be placed farther. apart. At each new crop, the bees strengthen them by adding more wax. They also thicken them so that we may use as few as 9 super combs in the super of an 11-frame hive. This gives thicker combs of honey and there is less uncapping. These deep cells are also less likely to attract the queen who requires shallow cells to lay eggs. So the danger of breeding in the super is lessened by the use of a less number of combs in it.
**Robbing**
We spoke of the possibility of annoyance by robbers, when returning supers of combs to the hives. As a matter of course, these combs are sticky with honey. If the crop has ended, the odor of the honey attracts robbers. That is why we return them to the bces in the evening only. Some people do not return them at all till the following spring. We object to preserving them in this shape, for several reasons.
First. The honey with which they are still slightly smeared is likely to gather moisture, for honey is exceedingly hygrometric, absorbing moisture readily from the air. We at different times had honey to ferment in the cells, during the season following, owing to the presence of a small quantity of this fermented honey in combs that had not been cleaned.
Second. Combs which are sticky with honey are much more attractive to both mice and bees and therefore are more difficult to preserve over winter.
Third. The same trouble is likely to occur when we place these supers on the hive in the spring, as we fear at harvest time. Their strong odor attracts robbers to the hives to which they are given.
Some people allow the bees of the different colonies to clean out the supers, after the crop is over, by exposing them in an open spot of the apiary, until all the honey has been carried out. We have found this to give incentive to robbing and do not like the practice. Besides, if a neighbor has bees, they are likely to come and help themselves also. We believe in being neighborly, but not to that extent.
When robbing has begun on a colony, if it is not worth saving, we break it up and give its combs to other colonies to protect, after having first gotten rid of the robbers.
If the colony is worth saving and we find that it is robbed by only one other colony, we stop the robbing by exchangingthe two colonies for each other, placing the robbing colony in place of the robbed one and vice versa. A little flour, sprinkled over the escaping robbers, readily indicates their home.
If the robbing has just begun, it is usually sufficient to throw a bunch of grass loosely upon the entrance of the robbed colony. Its home guards station themselves in that grass as in trenches and pounce upon the robbers who soon give up the attempt.
But it is much easier to forestall robbing than to stop it after it has successfully begun. Therefore we take the greatest care to avoid exposing any honey while extracting.
We use both robber-cloths over the supers while carrying them and tin pans under them, to avoid dropping any honey on the wheelbarrow used, or on the grass, or on the clothes of the apriarst. It is worth while to be careful. One experience with robbing is sufficient to teach us a useful lesson.
Figure 48: Supers returned to the hives after the last extracting of the year
While working about the apiary, the apiarist sometimes finds himself followed by robber bees which appear to understand that they may find profit in shadowing him.
We have often stopped our work for an hour or so on this account, or perhaps have gone to work at the other end of the apiary to baffle the robbers.
The worst thing to be feared from robbers is not during the harvesting of the crop. It is when there happens to be disease in the apiary and we find ourselves compelled to open the hives that contain this disease in a period of scarcity of crop. This matter will be considered at the chapter on diseases.
### 11 Varying Honey Crops
In our locality, as in many others, the honey yields are divided into two very distinct seasons, the summer crop and
Figure 11: Super combs which have been in use for over fifty years, and are fully as good as at first
the fall crop. The flavor, quality and color of the honecy of these two seasons being very distinct, it is necessary to keep the crops separate. Then also there is sometimes quite a dearth between the two, during which the unsupplied swarms must be looked after, just as we do in spring.
### Requeening
It is usually during this short season that we replace the queens which have passed their period of usefulness. Some people change the queens in their hives every season. We believe that a queen is better in her second year than in her first. Exception must be made, however, with the queens that are inferior, by positive test, in their prolificness or in the generation which they produce. Such queens should be replaced as soon as possible.
We allow good queens to become fully two years old before we think of removing them. The removal and replacing with young queens is done with stock purchased from queen-breders of known integrity, whose breeding stock is known to us and approved as to purity and prolificness.
Rearing one's own queens, from known stock of good honey-producing qualities, is certainly the very best way, even though a beekeeper in the North may find it cheaper in dollars and cents to buy the queens already reared, from a Southern State, where the season lasts longer and bees are not so valuable for honey production.
The advantage of rearing our own queens is that we know exactly what the parentage is, as far as the mother is concerned at least, and if we use a little diplomacy, it is often easy to Italianize our neighbors' bees to secure pure matings. We have repeatedly, in bygone years, Italianized colonies for neighboring bee men, at one dollar per colony, taking all the trouble upon ourselves. We found that it paid us in the long run, as we secured more pure matings; since the neighbors are not so careful as we are in doing away with drone-combs and rear more drones than we do. This is just a suggestion to the careful beekeeper.
Queens will mate with drones from colonies a mile, or two or more away. We believe the drone travels the greater part of the distance.
Some beekeepers rear queens from the very best honey-producing colony in their apiary, regardless of whether the bees of that colony are of pure breed. We do not. Experience has taught us that fixed qualities are very rare in hybrids. Besides, the workers produced by a hybrid queen are usually cross in disposition. Pure Italians have our preference. There are other races equally good, such as the Caucasian. But Caucasian bees are of gray color and a slight mixture with the common race is difficult if not impossible to detect. Italians are very good bees and have the advantage of showing impure blood readily. We prefer them to any other race. We have tried the Cyprian, the Carnolan and the Caucasian. The latter we would take, next to the Italians. The Cyprian are too cross. The Carniolan show too great a propensity for swarming.
**Queen Introduction**
Some very practical men introduce queens in hives, during the honey crop, by simply removing the old queen, smoking the hive thoroughly for a little while, allowing the new queen to run in at the entrance and closing the entrance for a few minutes. This method has its drawbacks, for it is unsafe in any but a good honey-gathering season. Some people believe in making the colony queenless ahead of time. We don't. We wait till the new queen is there before removing the old one. We believe it a good plan to cage the old queen, for an hour or two previous to killing her, in the cage in which the new queen is to be introduced. It gives the cage the odor of the old queen and appears to make safe introduction more secure. Caging the queen on the brood-comb for a couple of days, we consider the best method of introduction. We have had less losses with this method than with any other.
Our first attempt at moving bees to the pastures, in the midst of summer, was in 1881. During that season everything of value to bees on the hills, dried or wilted in June and July.
The low lands, having been covered with water until the beginning of July, a very rapid growth of fall plants began as soon as the waters receded. Polygonums or knot weeds, (smartweed) especially of the variety persicaria, also called heartsease; spanish needles or bidens, also called burr-marigolds; boneset and numerous other low land plants, formed great fields of variegated colors, yielding splendid golden honey.
Figure 52: Map of the Dadant Apiaries in 1919
we thus hauled a large number of colonies to the low lands (400 in 1919), with profit.
The advent of the auto truck has certainly made a revolution in nomadic bekeeping, as a man can readily enough haul even rich colonies from one place to another. To confine them, we usually entirely nail up the entrance, as we find that the old bees are apt to worry on the screen, if screen is used to close it up, since that is their usual exit. We remove the cap and the supers, hauling them separately, and each colony is covered with a wooden frame entirely screened over, with cross pieces
Figure 51: Closing brood-chambers with screens for hauling in hot weather
to protect the screen. Thus 400 colonies were hauled from 25 to 30 miles without any loss. They were brought back to the original apiaries in the fall during frosty weather. At that time no ventilation is necessary. A deep wire cover gives them sufficient air.
In addition to the advantage of bringing bees to rich pasture,we believe there is a gain in what Mr. Demuth calls "morale" in the behavior of the bees, when they are transported. We have often noticed that bees brought to a new spot, whether it be in spring or fall, and having to learn a new country, become more active. It seems to increase their energy, their morale, to find themselves in new fields. We are not the only. ones, besides Demuth, to have noticed this. Others have spoken of it also. It sems to act upon them as upon pioneers who go forward to new countries, for we believe that the great energy, the positive activity, of the American people, are due to their having been pioneers in new spots as yet uncultivated. Bees may be induced to more activity in several ways and we believe this is one of them.
A similar argument is brought forward by a beckeeper of the Netherlands, who, after having described the nomadic methods of Hollandish beekeepers, who move their bees to the heather fields every summer, asserts that the moving of the bees increases their activity and the breeding propensity of their queens. We might cite similar opinions from several other noted apiarists.
## Chapter 11 Fall Management
When the end of the crop is near, we find it advisable to make sure that our bees are putting enough honey in their brood combs for winter.
With comb-honey production, it is often noticed that the bees have crowded so much honey in the brood combs that they have little room for breeding. The colony decreases in numbers, especially if the crop lasts to a late date.
With our management in the production of extracted honey, large brood chambers and very free access to a number of supers, it may happen, if we are not on the lookout, that our bees will have a contrary experience, an insufficient quantity of honey in the brood combs. We believe in a very large amount of stores for winter and spring. The old way was to figure on 25 pounds. We want 40 pounds at least to make sure that there will be no shortage and no stint in the spring breeding. To obtain this, we crowd the bees for room; that is to say, we allow them a little less super room and this forces them to put a sufficiency in the brood combs. Better have 50 pounds than only 25.
It is not advisable, however, to ramp them so that the fall breeding will be neglected. A colony wintering on mainly old bees and a limited number of young bees is not likely to succeed as well as a colony that has bred freely till the late fall. This question requires judgment on the part of the apiarist. Even a very experienced man will make mistakes in this matter. Much also depends upon the conditions at the end of the crop. In many seasons the amount of brood reared, before cool nights come, depends upon the field conditions.
## Chapter 12 Wintering
If we have a sufficiency of honey in the brood combs, a good strong colony of bees upon those combs, we have the best possible conditions for winter, provided the honey is of good quality.
We had very expensive experience with honeydew, harvested in July and retained in the brood combs for winter. We had similarly great losses with fruit juice, apple juice, grape juice, etc., harvested by the bees in September-October, during a dearth of honey. The season of 1879 was especially discouraging, for, while the bees did no damage to sound fruit and only gathered grape-juice from bird-damaged grapes and sweet cider from damaged apples, many of our neighbors thought that we were getting rich at their expense, supposing that our bees were transforming all that fruit juice into good honey. The truth of the matter was that many a bee was unable to even reach home with the fermented juices that it gathered, in lieu of good honey. Although we tried to take out of the comb all the cider and fermented grape juice that they thus stored in the cells, there was enough left to poison them during the cold days.
Honeydew, fruit juice, cheap syrups, and honey containing many pollen grains, are bad winter food. To keep warm, the bees must consume honey and they must have as pure saccharine matter as possible, as all grades of sweet food containing acids, vegetable matter, starch, etc., leave a large amount of residue in their intestines, which they must discharge out of the hive, on the wing, or suffer from diarrhea or dysentery. This is discharged in the hive, upon the other bees of the cluster, if the weather is too cold for them to void their feces outside. That is why many of the most practical apiarists feed their bees the best quality of sugar syrup to complete their winter stores. It is a good method to follow, even if some desk-educated apiarists affirm that bee diseases are due to the use of sugar in bee food. We are quite willing to grant that, for spring food, nothing is better than honey, because of its containing matter whichhelps build the body of the young bec. But when the bees are full grown and confined to the hive, nothing is better for them than the purest saccharine matter. So we have always made it a point to remove all honeydew and late-gathered, dubious sweets, harvested during a shortage of flowers in fall.
If the bees are short, we add to their stores by supplying them, in inverted can feeders, in the month of October, with sugar syrup made of 2 parts of high grade cane sugar to 1 part of water. If they do not take it too fast, they will assimilate it, or in other terms invert it, by their saliva, just as they do with pure nectar. If there is danger of the sugar not being sufficiently inverted, it is a good plan to add to the food about one fifth of its weight in good honey, _with the quality of which we are acquainted._ This point is important, for it would not do to use unknown honey that might bring them disease, such as found-broad.
In our entire experience, we have had 5 or 6 winters when the amount stored by the bees was insufficient to carry them through. Whenever the amount of good sugar syrup given the bees, in addition to their own stores, was sufficient, we regularly found them to winter better than if they had used only natural stores. So we are very much in favor of sugar feeding whenever the colonies are short for winter.
Whatever be the conditions, we aim to have our bees in proper shape for winter long before the opening of cold weather. Just as it was necessary to get them to breed plentifully until the chilly days come, so it is necessary that they should quit breeding when there are no more bees being lost from overwork or accident. We want plenty of young bees for winter, but we do not want them to have an amount of brood to care for, when winter opens. At that time, the quieter they are, the better it is for them and ourselves.
### 11.2 Cellar Wintering