Contraction—Improvement in Bees.

I tried contracting the brood-chamber of four colonies during basswood honey-flow, and three of them would persist in building comb on the vacant side of the dummy. One even got so far as to have quite a comb there, (mostly drone-comb) with the queen laying in that side.

The combs in the brood-chamber were very nearly all worker, and instead of the queen using them, and the bees storing above, they capped them over half full of honey. They worked in the super some, but not like bees ought to when there is a good honey-flow. They had, I think, five Langstroth frames, maybe six.

I fitted a thin piece of board over the vacant part of the brood-chamber. One of the four stayed “contracted” all right. It had six frames. This one was a new swarm, and worked all right in the super, but re-swarmed in August.

1. I would like advice on contracting, and how to do it. Ought I to contract all summer, where the bees get enough honey to breed strong all the time? Also, there is lots of pollen here all summer.

2. In Mr. Simmins’ essay on page 689 of the Bee Journal for 1893, he gives as one of his means of preventing swarming, the withdrawal of the two outer combs, and inserting near the center of the brood-nest two empty frames. Are not these empty frames apt to be filled with drone-comb?

3. On the same page he speaks of rearing young queens in the fall to requeen with, also as a means of preventing swarming. What is the object of rearing them in the fall?

4. Would not cells saved at the swarming season do as well?

5. Where the bees of a neighborhood are about half blacks and half Italian, or a good share hybrid, would you advise a person to try to Italianize, suppose his bees were about half and half?

6. Where the bees of a neighborhood are two-thirds black, and you want to produce comb honey mostly, would it be best to breed from your best black queens, rather than to try to Italianize?

7. Don’t you think (of course the big queen-breeders don’t read this department) that if the black bees had been bred as scientifically, and as much care and study given them as has been bestowed on the Italians, in the last 20 or 30 years, they would have been to-day as good, if not better than the Italian?

E. S. M.

Denison, Iowa.

Answers.—1. I have contracted down to five, four, three, and in some cases down to only one or two combs, having no combs built in the brood-chamber. A division-board or a dummy was next to the comb or combs left, and the space partly filled with dummies. One or two years I filled in the vacant space with hay. If two dummies were put in next the brood-comb, with half an inch space between them, there was no trouble about combs being built in the vacant space left. But please notice that there was no queen in the hive. Without a queen, bees don’t seem so intent on building comb, but with a queen you would likely find them clustering in the open space left beyond the two dummies, there to build combs.

With the queen left in the hive, as in your case, you should have filled up the vacant space in some way, so the bees couldn’t occupy it. If the space for the brood-nest is limited, the tendency of the bees is to build additional combs at the side, even if one or two dummies are in the way. Perhaps it is not necessary to have the dummies so close to each other as you get farther away from the brood-nest. At the farther side, next the wall of the hive, the bees are not so likely to commence building, even if the space is an inch or more.

I doubt if any one would advise you to contract all summer. I think contractionists would tell you to hive a swarm on five frames, then after those five are well occupied, and the bees working well in the supers, to add the other frames. Some of them might perhaps tell you to take out part of the frames from an old colony, but I rather think that now-a-days contraction is mostly confined to swarms. I don’t, however, count myself the highest authority on contraction, for after having done a good deal in that line I have gone back to the plan of allowing same number of combs summer and winter.

2. Yes, put an empty frame into the middle of a brood-nest at a time when there was any likelihood of swarming, and I should expect a good share of the comb built to be drone, especially if there was no drone-comb in the other frames.

3. Bees having a young queen are not so likely to swarm as those having an old one, and rearing a queen in a hive in the fall would not interfere with the harvest as would rearing one before the harvest.

4. There might not be much difference, only the later a queen is reared this year, the younger she will be next, and the less likely to swarm.

5. Yes, I’ve done that very thing, and I would keep on trying, for you will not get through with the trying for a good many years.

6. No, I would do my best to work in Italian blood.

7. No, I hardly think so. Between you and me, I don’t think there has been such an immense amount of science squandered on the breeding of Italian bees. They are what they are, because of the surroundings in their native habitat. While some have taken great pains in breeding, I think a large number to-day would say that an Italian queen imported from Italy 30 years ago was just as good as the average queen in America to-day, and every year many queens are imported from Italy and sold at a high price, which would hardly be, if there was no advantage in it. And I don’t know that any one claims that any improvement has been made in Italy, in the past 30 years.

Langstroth
Biographical