BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
We have used oil cloths, painted ducking, khaki, gunny cloth, &c. Anything which will confine the bees will do. Someobject to these articles because the bees tear them up. It is true that they do so, in the course of time. However, if the cloths are strong and well painted, they last a long time. Their usefulness permits us to put up with their inconveniences. We replace them as often as needed.
The oil cloth is constantly kept upon the hive, except in winter. When putting on supers we place it at the top of the supers.
The straw mat is an implement which very few people use. It is essentially a European implement, cheap and serviceable. European gardeners use mats of all sizes, to protect their cold frames, their hot house windows, their chicken coops or rabbit dens. We make them of the proper size for the top of the frames. They keep out the cold in winter and the heat in summer. In winter, the cloth being removed, the mat is placed directly over the combs, then absorbents over that. It is one of the most economical implements of the bee hive. Chas. F. Muth, an eminent beekeeper of the olden days, whom the writer knew well, used similar mats and considered them very valuable, as we do. But they do not seem attractive to the average beekeeper. Yet they keep away the heat of the sun, in July, as efficiently as the cold of winter, in January.
The telescope cover is made to accommodate at least the depth of one super. It might be made much shallower, but we have found it very handy in covering feeders. When more than one super is on, the telescope cover does not reach down. At that time it matters little whether the joints of the hive and of the different supers are uncovered, for that is the time of the honey harvest and bees do not try robbing then, usually.
The depth of our supers, as will be seen, is greater than the depth of the supers popularly supplied by dealers. This depth was decided upon by us, after due consideration and also consultation with Mr. Langstroth, years ago. At that time, some extracting supers were used of the same depth as the pound sections, i. e. with frames 4\(\sfrac{\zeta}{4}\) inches in depth. We considered these as mere playthings, of which too many would be requiredfor the supers of our large and populous hives. We therefore made supers that would supply frames with a \(6\,
aise 1.29pt\hbox{$<$\kern-7.5pt\lower 4.3pt\hbox{$\sim$}}\,\)inch side bar, \(6\,
aise 1.29pt\hbox{$<$\kern-7.5pt\lower 4.3pt\hbox{$\sim$}}\,\)in the clear. These combs are easily uncapped at a single stroke of the knife. Deeper frames are less convenient and shallower ones insufficient. Later, some manufacturers made supers with \(5\,
aise 1.29pt\hbox{$<$\kern-7.5pt\lower 4.3pt\hbox{$\sim$}}\,\)\(8\,
aise 1.29pt\hbox{$<$\kern-7.5pt\lower 4.3pt\hbox{$\sim$}}\,\)\(7\,\)frames. We prefer our size. It contains about \(2\,
aise 1.29pt\hbox{$>$\kern-7.5pt\lower 4.3pt\hbox{$\sim$}}\,\) of the quantity of honey contained in a standard Langstroth frame, is much more easy to handle, is uncapped in a single stroke of the knife and runs much less risk of broken combs, when the honey is fresh, the comb new and the weather hot.
For the supers, the spacing of frames is still greater than for the brood combs. Most of our extracting supers contain 9 frames only, spaced about \(13\,
aise 1.29pt\hbox{$<$\kern-7.5pt\lower 4.3pt\hbox{$\sim$}}\,\)\(4\,\) inches from center to center. New frames containing comb foundation are first spaced only \(1\,
aise 1.29pt\hbox{$<$\kern-7.5pt\lower 4.3pt\hbox{$\sim$}}\,\)\(1\,
aise 1.29pt\hbox{$<$\kern-7.5pt\lower 4.3pt\hbox{$\sim$}}\,\)\(2\,\) inches, as the wider spacing would cause the building of too heavy a comb of honey which would be frail, when new, for handling and extracting. But after the first extracting, such combs are strengthened by the bees and may then be spaced 9 to a super of 16 inches in width. The \(1\,
aise 1.29pt\hbox{$>$\kern-7.5pt\lower 4.3pt\hbox{$\sim$}}\,\)\(4\,\)spacing gives us the convenience of thicker combs of honey and less of them to uncap, thus producing more honey with a minimum of combs to handle.
It is well to state here why we make our super only 16 inches wide inside, while the brood chamber is a half inch wider. It is for the purpose of fitting the cover or cap more easily over the supers. The half inch space adds to the convenience.
As to the slogan"Only one size of frame in an apiary," so popular among bee men, we do not think it concerns the supers. It is no more trouble to have full stories for brood and half stories for honey than to have brood frames below and comb-honey sections above. A number of noted apiarists of the special honey-producing sections of the north agree with us fully in this. So will the beckeeper who gives the matter a fair trial.
**A Simplified Dadant Hive**
First of all, in giving the possibilities of our system with simplified hives, we agree that it would have been best, in adopt ng the Quinby depth of hive, to adopt the Langstroth length, which is 1/8 inches shorter. Not that we believe the Quinby-Dadant hive too long, but because, had we adopted the Langstroth length, many manipulations would have been possible
with a combination of the two. Thus, although we do not propose to change the length of our hives, after using so many during more than a half century, yet we are quite free to advise the use of the hive called in Europe the "Dadant-Blatt" and in this country the "Modified Dadant."
But in using a style similar to the Jumbo, we do not recommend the narrow spacing of 13\(\lx@sectionsign\) inches from center to center for brood frames as made in the Jumbo. We insist on the style of spacing which we have found very superior, already mentioned, of 13\(\lx@sectionsign\) inches from center to center, for the brood frames. This was already mentioned in the chapter on "frame spacing." In addition to the advantages mentioned there, we will soon describe another having to do with swarm prevention. The bottom board of a simplified Dadant hive may be made plain, as in the common movable-frame hives sold by dealers.
Figure 24: The story and a half Modified Dadant hive
## 4 Dadant system of bekeeping
The hive encasing the bottom board has the great fault, in the minds of many apiarists, to prevent the tiering up of hive bodies, since the projections would keep the upper hive from joining on the lower one and the bees would build comb between them. This is true. But we have found less need of tiering up brood chambers than the average apiarist would imagine. However, we are free to accept this as one of the leading points in the making of a simplified Dadant brood chamber. We have used hundreds ourselves with plain bottom.
Figure 26: The Modified Dadant hive has a 40 per cent larger brood comb area than the 10 frame Langstroth
Figure 25: Frames of the Modified Dadant hive are the same length as the Langstroth frames, but 2% inches deeperThe number of frames should be not less than 10, especially in the modified style, which is shorter than the regular Dadant and therefore contains a less amount of surface. The division board should be retained. This means an additional frame space, or an eleven frame width.
The double back is useful only in localities where the bees are wintered out-of-doors, without packing cases. Where heavy packing cases are used or where bees are wintered in the cellar, it is better to have hives single-wall all around. It is an economy and makes the hives lighter for transportation. The encased bottom-board, Dadant fashion, is not indispensable.
We would retain the slat, outside of the upper rabbet, at both ends, as it costs but little and makes the supers so much more readily adjustable. We would also retain the telescope cover, for its usefulness, if its cost were not objectionable.
made by machinery. We remember vividly the annoyance encountered, in the early days, from having employed a carpenter who carelessly cut the hives a quarter inch shorter than the pattern; so the frames of one kind would not fit in the other. It is very important that everything be exactly of the same size and, when we can afford it, we should use factory made hives, or, if we cannot make the hives ourselves, at least employ careful help. We made and used hundreds of hives, cut with a hand saw and later with a foot-power saw. We painted our hives ourselves, also, and did all this work in the dull season. We have always given the preference to white pine for bodies and cypress for bottoms.
As for the frames, it has never paid us to try to make them by hand. Some styles of frames, such as the Hoffman, cannot even be manufactured in a small saw mill, for it takes special machinery to cut them in a profitable manner.
Figure 29: The regular Langstroth body may be used as a super for the Modified Dadant hive
## Chapter 5 Handling the Bees
We were already keeping bees on a large scale before the invention of a practical bee-smoker. We used a piece of punk or of dry rotten wood, upon which we had to blow in order to produce a sufficient amount of smoke. The writer remembers being often dizzy from blowing his breath upon the rotten wood that he held in his fingers and which gave little enough smoke when the bees were cross. The beliows smokers, invented by Quinby and improved by Bingham, are a greater boon than our younger beekeepers, who have never had to do without them, can realize.
There are men who are either immune to bees or whom the bees do not sting. They handle them without smoke, without veil, and seem to care nothing for angry bees. We were not, and we are not yet, of that kind. The writer was very much afraid of bees in his young days. It was not until an overwhelming honey crop came that he conquered his fear of stings through enthusiasm. So the timid beckeeper should take courage. But we never believed in handling bees without smoke, using it, not plentifully, but judiciously, when opening hives. Many an enemy has been created to the keeping of bees, in suburbs, in villages, along the public highway, by careless handling of the colonies by a beekeeper who is not afraid. He does not get stung, but his neighbors, or the casual passer-by, are the victims. Allow us to relate an incident.
We had a friend, now deceased, in the neighboring city of Keokuk. His home was located on the edge of the bluffs, with no neighbors between it and the Mississippi River flowing below, 200 feet away, an ideal place for the avoidance of bee stings. But he had neighbors above him, up the bluff. He was in the habit of opening his colonies without smoke. The bees never stung him. He told the writer one day that he would have to sell his bees, a dozen colonies or so, because the neighbors complained of stings. He could not understand why they should sting them, when they did not sting him. After thisexplanation, we walked to the apiary and he opened a hive without using any smoke. Two or three angry bees, instead of stinging him, began to fly about and attacked the neighbor's dog, 40 feet away, up a steep slope. I called his attention to this, advised him to avoid opening the colonies without smoke. and from that day on he had no more trouble with the neighbors. You, inoculated beekeepers, who are careless and think everybody ought to be as sting-proof as you are, take heed of this. Consider other people's safety, if yours is secure, and do not handle your bees at any time without smoke.
We always carry a veil. It may be kept in the pocket, but should be always at hand, to be used in case of need.
We avoid disturbing the bees in cold weather, or in early morning, or late evening. The best time for manipulations we consider to be during the heat of the day, when most of the old bees are busy in the field.
Figure 30: Home apiary, where we kept bees over 55 years before the publication of this book
## Chapter 6 Our Apiaries
Our home apiary, where bees have been kept continuously since 1864, is not in an ideal location for honey. In fact it is only ideal for its sheltered position, in a gentle slope to the southeast, under shading forest trees, which yet do not prevent the rays of the morning sun from striking the hives. We consider shade very useful, in the hot summer climate of Illinois. At one time we thought we had too much, as it had become very dense. The bees had had several poor crops and we were inclined to ascribe the inactivity of the colonies to too much
Figure 31: A Dadant outyard. The Poland Apiaryshade. But before we had opportunity to cut down any of this shade, (this was in 1903) we harvested one of the largest honey crops that we ever secured. We concluded that it is difficult to place the apiary under too much shade, in this climate. We use roofs, made of coarse lumber, over the colonies, and we believe that it is profitable, both in the economy of wear of the hive lumber and in the shelter it furnishes the bees during the warm season.
In establishing an apiary, we believe it is necessary to place the colonies in rows. But we do not wish great uniformity, great enough that the workers and especially the young queens be unable to easily recognize their homes.
With 30 or 40 hives, of similar color and shape, ranged in regular rows, without outsideguide-marks, there is ample occasion for bees to make a mistake, in their first flight, and enter the wrong hive, on their return home. It is of little consequence with the workers, unless too great a number of them should "drift" from the weak colonies to the stronger. This is likely to occur more
Figure 32: Another Dadant outward; the Holland apiary
Figure 34: The Milliken outward of the Dadant system
Figure 35: The I.eMaire apiary of the Dadant outward system
or less. But the greater danger is when a young queen, returning from her mating flight, enters the wrong home. She is almost certain to be put to death, if the colony which she enters by error is cuenright. Then her own colony becomes hopelessly quencless, unless, as is rarely the case, they still have sealed queen-cells from which they may rear a new queen. At best, the colony suffering from that accident is very much delayed in its breeding.
For this reason, we like to arrange our colonies so that every few feet, there will be some noticeable mark, such as a tree, a bush, or a greater space between hives. It is sufficient to call the beckeeper's attention to this, so that he may go to the trouble of arranging the colonies in such a way as to avoid the "drifting." Painting the hives of different colors is a good way. But dark colors are objectionable, as they are too hot in summer, and light colors soon fade. We know this by long experience.
**Outapiaries**
We have had outapiaries since 1870. They have been located in all sorts of spots, near the Mississippi River, where the water cut away half of the pasture; in timber land; on the open prairie, among corn fields and wheat fields; on the lowlands of the Mississippi, where only fall blossoms abound; and along the Illinois River, in a similar position. We did not find any ideal spot. There are advantages to each location and disadvantages as well. We hauled bees, in the heat of the summer, on hay racks, a distance of 25 miles, when it was necessary to travel nearly all night to avoid the exposure of the hives to August sunshine. Nowadays, when we transport bees to the lowlands, we use a motor truck and the trip which occupied 8 hours, in 1881, is now made in a trifle over two hours. The younger generation will indeed never realize the hardships that the grandfathers had to face. But our young generations are accepting tasks that we could never have dreamed of and their hardships may prove equal to ours, after all.
It is hardly within the scope of this book to dwell largely on outapiraries. We refer the reader to the work "Outapiaries" by M. G. Dadant, son of the writer, whose present experience in that line is quite active. Suffice it to say that we have found, within a distance of four miles, a difference in quality, color, and quantity of honey harvested. This shows that bees, in this locality at least, do not usually travel much over 2 miles in search of honey.
Figure 35: The Koch outapirary of the Dadant System is located on the edge of the Mississippi bottoms
## Chapter 7.
### 7.1.1 A
Figure 36. Another Dadant outapiary located on the edge of the Mississippi spotoms. The Sack yardto ascertain whether they have sufficient stores to carry them to fruit bloom, and to clean out the dead bees from deceased colonies and close them, so that neither robbers nor moths may enter.
Quencless colonies are not looked for until the second visit, shortly before fruit bloom. The weak, quencless colonies are united with others, lifting their combs bodily, in a cool, evening, to place them behind the division board of a quencright but comparatively weak colony which does not occupy its entire hive and will be benefited by the help. If both colonies have been given a little light food, there is no fight.
We have also found the newspaper plan of uniting bees, given by Dr. Miller, a very good method. It is used quite generally. During a cool night, place one of the colonies, to be united, over the other, separating them with a newspaper and closing all entrances except that of the lower hive. The bees gnaw the paper slowly and generally unite peaceably.
If the quencless colonies are not weak, as some times happen.s, we give them a queen purchased from a reliable Southern breeder. We used to rear our own supersedure queens and it is a desirable thing to do. But we have been too busy, for years past, to spend any time at this work, which requires special conditions. Southern breeders, if they are active and honest, and there are many such, can rear good queens by the time our bees awaken from winter rest.
As a breeder is not always able to supply queens on short notice, we are in the habit of placing an approximate order, for an approximate time, early enough to get a part at least, of the queens we will need.
Since we have gone into the keeping of over 500 colonies of bees, we have taken less pains to save a colony which comes out of the winter quencless. Yet, taking it all in all, it is not a bad idea to keep this colony going if we wish to avoid having empty spots in the apiary. We have often helped such a colony with a comb of brood, early, then used it as we might use an empty hive, in making a division, late in May. This is hardly profitable, however.
When we wish to examine the hives for the removal of drone-combs, and the replacing of them with worker-combs, which we consider of great importance, in all but the hives which we select as drone producers, and when we have transfers to make, as happens nearly every year, of crooked combs caused by accidents, or of box hives purchased from old-fashioned beekeepers, which we aim to secure in order to do away with box-hive beekeeping, this work is done during early fruit bloom. At that time, the colonies have the least bees and the least honey and are more easily handled without danger of robbing. Methods of transfer of the combs of box hives are given at length in "The Hive & Honey Bee."
In this locality, a long interval of honey dearth exists between fruit bloom and the first yield of the real honey crop, white clover. This is not the case in many other locations, in which some bloom or other fills the gap. During that interval, it is necessary to look after the bees, for they often decrease their laying in a serious manner. It may be necessary to feed them and it is profitable to do so. But this is irregular, so our system of action depends very much upon circumstances. Rarely, the fruit bloom has yielded sufficiently to induce them to continue breeding until the first clover blossoms appear. Our action, at this time, depends upon those conditions. But we find it indispensable, at any cost, to keep the bees breeding. As Mr. Geo. S. Demuth, of the Bureau of Entomology, puts it so clearly, "we must raise our bees for the honey crop and not upon the honey crop." The following of the above axiom, for years, has probably been the most positive reason of our success in beekeeping.
### The Honey Crop
We have had a number of seasons when the white clover, whose bloom forms the principal crop of our locality, was entirely killed by the drought of the previous season. In such years, we are pleased if our bees make enough to support themselves till the fall harvest. It is during those years that we aim to make increase, for we have bees in plenty and little for them todo.
## Chapter 10 DADANT system of bekeeping
### 10.1 Increase
We do not believe in natural swarming. So we do everything that will tend to prevent it. Although "bees never do things invariably," as very truly said by Dr. C. C. Miller, we have very little swarming, little enough to render it unimportant and the watching for swarms a negligible matter. This is of importance to us, since we are constantly busy at a variety of labor, for we are not only beekeepers, but also dealers in bee goods and makers of comb foundation, with a large force of men under our direction. It is also very important not to be required to keep a watchman at each outapiary. It is true that there are seasons when the bees get ahead of us and when it might pay to keep a watchman at each apiary. But these seasons are rare. In 50 years past, we have remembrance of only two, when the bees got so far ahead of us that we had swarms, in great numbers, that were not cared for. A little farther along we will give our method of preventing swarming. We will first give our method of making increase.
We stated, in the chapter on spring management, that we do not now rear our own queens. But as we have reared queens for increase, at one time, we will indicate the method which we followed when neither the Doolittle method, nor the still more modern Barbeau method, were in use. The apiarist who wishes to rear queens, in the most modern way, should refer to special works on queen-rearing.
### 10.2 Queens for Increase
In early spring we remove as much as possible, all drone-comb from the colonies, except from two or three which we desire as drone breeders. These are among our best honey producers of the previous year. We want them pure Italians, because both past experience and breeding theories indicate that hybrids, however good they may prove as honey producers, do not transmit their qualities so invariably as a pure race.
We also prefer pure Italians to other foreign races, because with the Italian we can readily recognize the least amount offoreign blood, while with recognized good races of so-called gray bees, such as the Carniolan or the Caucasian, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to detect a small mixture of the common black bee. The Italians, to our mind, have so thoroughly proved their worth, that we seek no further than pure bees of that race. Imported Italians have been our best bees.
With the method of removing drone combs from undesirable colonies, we secure a very large percentage of good matings, for the colonies from which drone-combs have been taken rarely rear more than 200 to 300 drones, while we secure several thousands in our selected colonies by placing drone combs in the center of the brood nest.
We also select two of our best queens for queen producers. When the time comes, at the opening of what we call the honey
Figure 37: Queen-cells hang downwards and are built preferable in open spaces on new comb
harvest, we make a good colony quecnless and exchange its brood for a less number of combs of brood from one of these best quecns. By giving them a less number than they had of their own, we make sure that the queen-cells reared will be well cared for.
To secure a large number of fine queen-cells, we might follow the Alley plan, or the Dolittle plan, but these belong to commercial queen-rearing and we will not describe them. They are described in the Hive & Honey Bee and also in Pellet's Practical Queen Rearing. A very good method is to supply our breeding quecns, 3 or 4 days ahead, with new combs or comb foundation cut with rounding edges at intervals, for the easy production of queen-cells by the bees. When these combs are full of eggs and young larvae less than 3 days old, they are just right for our queen-rearing.