BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
To have in our minds a conception of brood conditions in the hive prior to and at the time of the urge, will give us a clearer understanding of the principal cause of the urge. By a study of the following hypothetical tabulation, the conditions of a hive can be seen. A ten-frame hive of Langstroth dimentions has, when the frames are filled with worker cells, about 66,000 of these cells. Deduct 12,000 for the ones occupied by pollen and capped honey and there is left 54,000 cells for brood and nectar.
This is about the condition of brood in a strong colony at Fargo, North Dakota on the given dates. On June 23 there would be in this colony 25,000 bees under 10 days and 44,440 over 10 days old.
It can readily be seen that, when the hive is filled with brood honey and pollen, when sunshine and flowers are tempting to be used.
the bees to work almost to madness, the honey coming in deposited in cells and interfering with the laying of the queen, their system of housekeeping is disorganized. Their instinct tells them that now is the time to get things in shape for swarming.
Another condition of hive that gives like results is when the cells are filled with nectar, and the conditions of atmosphere and hive such that little or no evaporation takes place.
## 4. Wax
Also, when from whatever cause, the bees have a lot of sealed honey around the brood-nest, and because the empty outside combs are too cold for work, they will not remove the honey to these to enable the queen to lay. This is the condition of colony where spreading the brood makes more room, also that makes a colony in a sixteen-frame hive take on the urge.
To understand this condition a knowledge of the relation of temperature to wax-working is necessary. To work and build with wax requires a temperature nearly as high as that maintained in the brood-nest, and when any part of the hive is colder than is consistent for easy work with wax; the bees, if they work on wax at all, do it in the warmer part of the hive.
It must be borne in mind that the bees, like all other creatures, do things mostly in the line of least resistance. It is easier to work wax where it is warm than where it is cold. Hence we find the bees starting on the center combs in the second super, before finishing the outside ones in the first. The beekeeper who puts boards, with slits on either side for the bees to enter the super from the brood-chamber, produces a condition that sends the warm air from the brood-chamber up through the slits; thereby giving the bees a good temperature to work on outside combs.
Beekeepers who produce heather honey in England, because of the cold nights, put a covering over and around the supers to keep them warm. Otherwise poor results follow. It has been demonstrated that combs can be built down to the bottom bar in a super better than in a brood-chamber with an opening at the bottom front, and here again temperature plays its part.
Knowing the relation of temperature to working in wax, it can readily be seen how a colony, with plenty of hive room may be crowded for brood-room and acquire the urge.
Caging the queen gives more room, but brings on the urge and may result in swarming. Removal of the brood and substituting foundation or drawn comb gives laying room to the queen. These are good examples of destructive beekeeping. How much better the colony could get ahead had they hives so constructed and protected from outside weather conditions that they could evaporate the water from their honey and store it away from the brood-nest.
Shaking the bees gives ample room, but that is artifical swarming.
Removing the water from the nectar and giving the bees an opportunity to store this ripened nectar in fewer cells makes more room, and when this can be accomplished soon after the bees' last trip to the field, it shortens their hours of work, adds to their comfort and perhaps lengthening their lives.
It is just as necessary for the economy of their domestic arrangement that they have room sufficient and warm enough to ripen the honey, as for storage of ripened honey and brood.
BROOD - FRAMES
Broad-frames cannot be ignored in constructive beekeeping, because they have so close a relation to room in the hive. The nearer the number of worker cells in all the frames approach the maximum, the more room the hive contains. Frames not filled to the bottom-bar and frames containing drone comb; will, together with other conditions, make just enough difference in hive room to bring on the urge. The ten-frame hive, under these conditions, has but little more room than eight full frames.
The size of a hive, no matter what its dimensions, is expressed in the number of worker cells it contains. A hive with but from 40,000 to 50,000 worker cells must not be thought of as a standard hive, even though it has ten standard frames.
Empty spaces inside the frames make an extra expense to the beekeeper, and an added burden on the bees. They have fully one-fourth more space to keep warm in a hive with beespace and frames, than they have in a box hive of the same dimensions.
Another way a constructive principle can be applied to the frame is to reduce the top-bar to the same thickness as the bottom-bar. Beekeepers are convinced that ten frames are not enough for a good laying queen, therefore some advocate giving more room above, by adding another hive-body, others giving more room on the side, using a wider hive-body, while some make the hive higher, wider and longer. The larger hive-body, it is claimed, gives better results when used in producing extracted honey, but it can never become a standard hive, because a great number of beekeepers produce comb honey.
The ten frame or standard hive being the best for most purposes, it remains for the beekeeper, when he gives more room, to give the bees a brood-nest with as little space between comb and comb, where the brood-bodies meet, as possible. Considering that all the combs in the hive body given above are built down to the bottom-bar, we have at the junction of the two hive bodies, a space between comb and comb of top-bar, beespace and bottom bar, or about one and one-half inches. From experiments it has been observed that a thick top-bar is a fairly good queen excluder. Hence it is apparent that more or less of an effort is required to pass over this space. When this is reduced by a thin top-bar an easier passage for the queen and bees is made, and better results will follow. In smoothing out little difficulties like these we are always apply repaid.
For the same reason all comb should be built down to the bottom-bar, then with cells overlapping top and bottom bars of the respective hive-bodies, the beespace is all that separates comb from comb. The thin top-bar adds more cells to the hive, so adding its mite to the economy of the hive, and giving the bees nearly continuous comb from top to bottom of the hive.
## Ventilation
One of the axioms of beekeeping is ventilate. No matter what other manipulations the beekeeper recommends to prevent swarming, he always adds "VENTILATE". Why do the bees require so much fresh air in May and June when they have double the capacity of air space, within the hive, that they have in October and November
The air in the hive serves a two-fold purpose. It supplies the bees with oxygen and influences the amount of water vapor the hive can contain. This water vapor is given off in the ripening of honey and the breathing of the bees. It is either removed from the hive by ventilation or carried to the walls and ceiling, where it is condensed and used by the bees for domestic purposes.
Ventilation is constructive in principle when the nights are warm and the atmosphere comparatively dry, but is destructive when the nights are cold and the atmosphere nearly saturated with moisture. Only the best beekeepers can, by ventilation, maintain that nice balance that accords with temperature and strength of the colony.
During the season when the bees are most likely to acquire the urge the nights are colder and the humidity of the air greater than later in the season. At such times a cold current of air throught the hive interferes with the rearing of brood and does not help much in the ripening of honey. Each day of good honey gathering bringing the colony nearer to a crowded condition.
No beekeeper finds it practicable to change the ventilation as the temperature changes, but must rely on his judgment of the amount that gives best results.
The manipulations of divisible brood chambers can be considered under the head of ventilation. When the two sections of the brood chamber have been broken apart or exchanged, the percentage of colonies that acquire the urge has been reduced. This can readily be explained by showing how it makes for ventilation. If it is done prior to the urge it will have a tendency to
## 1.1. Constructive beekeeping
reduce swarming. All tearing apart of hive-bodies from each other or from covers or bottom-boards leaves a rough surface to the adjoining parts, the result of dirt, grass or bees adhering to the propolisis. When the hive is again put together the adjoining surfaces are not tight and ventilation is the result.
The result of ventilation is room. Because ventilation has given more room we have all believed in it. Room can be given by ventilation but at the expense of a warm hive.
The velocity of the wind and shape and size of the entrance must be studied in their relations to one another when considering ventilation. The ill effects from winds, even with reduced entrances, is sometimes apparent. A bunch of grass or a shrub, sometimes two or three feet away from the entrance may deflect and send a current of air right- into the hive, or it may produce a calm at the entrance. The only possible way to have uniform ventilation is to have a good wind break. If the hives are so situated as to be in a calm at all times then what ventilation there is is regular, but hives so situated are troubled with excessive swarming.
With any wind at all blowing, no two hives in a row, nor in different rows, even though they have the same size openings, will have the same ventilation. To any one who has tried to follow the course of air movements along the surface and a few feet above the earth, winding in and out among obstructions, sometimes flying off at a tangent, sometimes circling all around, sometimes upward or downward, bounding and rebounding from such obstructions, it is apparent that air currents among the hives in an aipary are so complex as to be past our understanding. This but shows with what little certainty ventilation can be made anyway uniform. Hence the different results at different times from apparently similar treatments.
Shade in the afternoon has been proven to be somewhat of a preventive of the urge. This is clearly explained by the laws governing condensation of water vapor, and will be treated in the chapter under that head.
Ventilation and shade each make more room in the hive,which leads me to remark that ventilation is constructive at the proper time, and under right atmospheric conditions, but is destructive in spring and early summer, because of the low temperature and moisture-laden atmosphere. Air that is already full of moisture will be of little use in drying the air of the hive. To demonstrate this a wet cloth can be hung by the hive on a night of high relative humidity, and in the morning it will be far from dry. It will require no great reasoning on the part of anyone to see that the water vapor of the hive is not all carried away by ventilation.
During a heavy flow of honey the queen gradually and sometimes sharply reduces the number of eggs laid per day. We know that had the same thing happened during the spring building-up of the colony it would have brought on the urge. Some one will point to the above statement as a contradiction of the one that the urge is the direct result of the actual or apparent failure of the queen. We know, from observation, that they are almost sure to swarm in spring or early summer when this condition, exists. In summer, with an abundant honey flow and plenty of room, they rarely swarm. In the fall they quietly supercede the queen.
It is obvious that the aim or object for which they strive in each of the three periods mentioned is not the same, and that the aim or object attained as the collective result of these three periods, is that for which all bees are striving, the survival of the colony.
During the spring period the one purpose for which they strive is numbers. Every atom of concerted energy of the colony is working to increase the unit strength of the colony. When we consider the advantages that numbers give for offense and defense and general welfare, we know that they are urged on by the law of the survival of the fitest.
After this carnival of brood-rearing, when weather and field conditions prompt their instinct to a realization that winter is ahead, and only the colonies that are fitest survive; we have the energy of the colony directed as a unit to gathering stores. The brood-rearing at this period is a secondary consideration, and about keeps pace with the bees that fall from the ranks.
The next period has brood-rearing and general preparation for the winter on its schedule. This brood-rearing does not take on the riotous nature of the spring period.
There is no definite line or date dividing these periods. They dovetail into one another and only by close observance and much bee-wisdom is a person able to detect the change of colony procedure as the bees pass from the spring to the summer period. Because of the inability of the ordinary beekeeper to sense this, he has not been uniformly successful in the production of comb honey.
In passing from one period to the other the colony work fades from rearing brood to gathering honey, then back again to rearing brood. This change depends as much or more on strength and good condition of the colony as on weather and field conditions. The beekeeper, not being able to tell the exact time that each particular colony is prepared to take on the work of the next period, assumes that they take on the urge in the summer period when contraction of the brood takes place.
The rearing of queens by the colony cannot be considered an acquired habit. We have to admit that it is both for the reproduction of the colony and the species, and goes back to the very origin of life.
The strongest disire or urge in all life is to reproduce its kind. If this disire is destroyed in a species that species becomes extinct. It is an impossibility to breed a swarmless bee. If it could be done all ambition, vim and energy would disappear, and as much could be accomplished with so many inanimate units.' The main thing in life is reproduction. All other things are done for the better bringing it about. Increase and multiply is the urge of all things living, so that each generation is greater in numbers and wisdom than the preceding.
As generation after generation succeeds one another, the acquirements of one when they are advantageous to the next, puts that next generation a stride forward in the battle for existance. The colonies in which this acquired habit took hold succeeded best, and when we realize that this development has been going on for countless years, by slow evolution, we can believe that the bees have acquired habits that are of advantage to them in their mode of life. Swarming is one of these habits, and should we be able to breed it out, they would be thrown back to their way of life or social development that existed in the colony before they acquired this habit.
A colony of bees cannot be considered in the scheme of reproduction the same as individuals. Individuals are being born regularly in th ecology, but through an acquired habit the colony carries on what may be called limited birth control, by preventing the perfect development of the female. CONDITIONS that induce the colony to start queen-cells, or allow perfect development, is what we must control to prevent the urge.
The bees in their wild state seldom had a home that did not at some time become filled to its capacity. They developed a habit, as we know, of putting off reproduction of the colony while conditions in the home were such, that the strength of the colony could be increased; but letting it take place normally when home conditions were getting crowded. Sometimes the home was of such size that this did not occur for several seasons, but eventually the home became crowded, from accumulated honey, and swarming resulted.
The smaller the hive the sooner the urge. The smaller colonies that came from the smaller homes did not survive as often as the stronger ones, that had more time and room to prepare; hence we have bees with the habit of putting off swarming as long as hive conditions permit.
The act of swarming must be considered a protest against a condition in the hive. Could we keep a colony of bees with a good queen, and plenty of necessary room, we would have no swarms. It has been done, so it is not impossible.
## Evaporation
One of the by-products given off by the bees in ripening honey is water vapor. Sometimes more than one pound of water is expelled from the honey in part of a night. This much water vapor at average hive temperature of 90 deg. F. would fill to saturation over 600 standard hive-bodies. Then if the air entering the hive was absolutely dry, and that emerging from it at saturation, and the hive air completely changed in one minute, this amount of water vapor would pass out in about 10 hours. But we never have absolutely dry air, nor do we have all the air in the hive even near saturation, nor can the bees change all the air in the hive, through an opening in the lower front, in one minute. The bees could not get rid of a pound of water this way in 24 hours.
One pound of water evaporated during the night, from the nectar brought in during the day, would empty over 1600 cells. These and the ones vacated by hatching bees would keep well ahead of the queen.
In handling bees we are bound to give recognition and allowance for the storing and ripening of nectar between the stores of ripened honey and the brood. If the hive be so protected that a good working temperature can easily be maintained, the honey close around the brood-nest is either moved to some outside comb, or consumed by the bees and brood, leaving empty cells to store the nectar.
Removal of the water from the nectar is something to which the beekeeper has given little attention, because it could not be seen, but nevertheless we have the water vapor given off when the bee ripens a drop of honey in his mouth. We are as certain of it as we are of the wax scales that the bees secrete. We see the wax, but the water vapor not being visible, has claimed little of our attention. The beekeeper, striving for good results, cannot afford to oveil look the great part that water vapor plays in the hive.
When the beekeeper opens the hive for inspection, does heever observe the room available for the storage of a generous amount of nectar. He looks for queen-cells, the amount of brood and sealed honey, and in this way he is conscious of what he calls plenty of room. While there is yet space between brood and honey, he concludes that the bees swarm before they are crowded for room. Did they have room to carry on all the work of the hive?
Consider a farmer, who has ample granary room to store his wheat, and who tried to put it in the granary before it was thrashed. It can readily be seen that the granary would not hold it. The bees must have temporary storage cells just as the farmer must have sufficient room to stack his grain before it is thrashed. This is the room that the beekeeper has sensed, rather than to have observed it as room necessary for the domestic work of the bees. As the farmer must put aside the straw, so must the bees evaporate the water to get the finished honey that can be stored economically.
How do the bees dispose of the great amount of water carried into the hive in the nectar? You say: "they evaporate it and it is carried off by the air." But is it? Try drying the family wash in a room of dimensions, as regards water to be evaporated, temperature and opening at the floor, proportionate to the beehive, and see how fast your wash dries. Be sure you have no windows in the room to condense the water vapor. Try it when temperature outside is 60 deg. F and the atmosphere one-half saturated, (one-half saturated in the evening is about as dry as we find the air in May and June where there is ample rain fall). Then try it when the atmosphere is 9-10 saturated, and after this experience you will be more amazed than ever at the bees' efficiency.
Still you are skeptical and remember that you should have put an electric fan at the opening, because the bees are seen to fan at the entrance. Let us not delude ourselves about the bees moving all the water vapor, given off in ripening honey, out of the hive by fanning.
Records of temperature and humidity taken from the U. S.
Weather Station at Moorhead, Minnesota, for three days at 7 P. M. are as follows:
1916 Temperature Humidity May 13........................ 45.5 93 May 14........................ 42.5 100 May 15........................ 37.5 96
To remove from the hive one grain of water vapor by fanning on May 13, the volume of air that would have to be moved would be five or six times the air capacity of the hive. To remove one pound of water would require the removal of a volume of air equal to the capacity of from 30,000 to 40,000 hive-bodies. On May 14 the outside air being saturated, no water vapor could be removed by a change of air, and on May 15 the result would be about the same.
From this it can readily be seen that little evaporation from the nectar could take place by ventilation, and we are led to believe that on such days as these the urge takes hold, giving swarms the last week of May.
No contention will be raised when the statement is made that the water is evaporated from the honey before we have ripened honey. It has been taken for granted that as soon as the water passes off by evaporation the bees were done with it. They would be if this evaporation took place the same as from the family wash hung on a line in open air. But if instead of having the great volume of mooving outside air, we have in a standard hive body a little less than one cubic foot of air, where is all this water vapor going to go? Saturate this small volume of air at hive temperature and the water vapor in it would be from 1-600 to 1-5000 of what the bees evaporate in a night during a good honey flow. If they saturated this air in the hive and then forced it out at the entrance, they would cause rain in the hive near the entrance.
When hive conditions are as they should be we must conclude that all the air in the hive is never near saturation. There is no known way of accurately measuring the humidity of the air inside the hive, but we can safely estimate that, except for a thin layer under the cover, it is never more than 3-4 saturated. We have then air entering the hive at a temperature of 50'F. and 1-2 saturation which would, when heated to hive temperature, be about 1-4 saturated. This air then when heated to hive temperature, being 1-4 saturated, is capable of taking up moisture until it is 3-4 saturated. The amount of moisture taken up by this air is 3-4 minus 1-4 or 1-2 of its capacity at saturation. This amount of water vapor would be less than 1-1000 of a pound for one cubic foot of air.
Now follow the course of this 90 degree air in passing from the hive by way of the entrance. As it approaches the entrance the temperature is reduced and it would give up some of its water at the entrance. Could they force all the air out of the hive at a temperature of 90 and fully saturated, each time the air in the hive is changed 1-600 of a pound of water would be removed. A pound of water could be expelled from the hive in 10 hours if the bees could change all the air of the hive once a minute.