As fast as the boxes were filled, they were removed, and empty ones substituted in their place. I never saw bees work with such determined industry, early and late, and in all kinds of weather. When honey failed at the end of the season, there was a set of boxes on the hive partially filled. I immediately gave the bees feed until these too were finished. I found, on weighing the product of this hive in the fall, that they had given me a fraction over three hundred and eighty pounds of surplus honey in boxes. This honey I sold at thirty-five cents a pound, a little over one hundred and thirty-three dollars, for surplus honey sold from this one stock. Reader, go thou and do likewise.
I had one stock of bees which occupied the same stand, winter and summer, for six years, and during that time they swarmed but once, and from it I sold every year over fifty dollars' worth of surplus honey in glass boxes. A neighbor several times offered me fifty dollars for this stock, early in the spring before the bees commenced their labors.
In 1874 I purchased a swarm of bees in an old box hive. They had not paid their owner a dollar in profit for years. Some seasons they would swarm and fly away to the woods; in other seasons they would remain clustered on the front of the hive through the entire season, refusing to swarm, or enter the two small boxes covered with a cap on top of the hive. I transferred the bees from this hive to the Controllable Hive, and they gave me a profit of over forty dollars the first year.
I sold my honey in 1874 for from thirty-three to thirty-five dollars per hundred gross weight—that is, no tare deducted for weight of the box. The boxes weigh each about one pound, empty, and when well filled with honey about four and one-half pounds, gross.
The present season (1880.) one stock in a Controllable Hive, in the month of June, without being fed or having extra care, yielded seventy-two pounds of surplus honey in glass boxes. Another, treated in the same manner, yielded over eighty pounds surplus, in the same time. Another new swarm, since the first week in June, filled the brood frames with honey, and produced thirty-eight pounds of surplus in glass boxes, (filling eight boxes as full as they could be crowded,) and gave me a large swarm the last week in June.
When box honey brings from thirty-three to thirty-five cents a pound, gross weight, my usual yearly average is a little over fifty dollars clean profit from the sale of box honey, from each stock of bees I keep. I intend to keep about twelve stocks each season. I sometimes have a much greater number; yet it is my purpose to keep only this number each season, for the production of surplus honey, swarms, etc. My average yield of surplus box honey is about two hundred pounds (perhaps a trifle less) from each hive of bees that I keep, during each season, when swarming is prevented and each stock liberally fed.
I will here give the testimony of a few of the many, who have adopted the plan of bee management recommended in this work. I should give the name and post-office address of each, were it not for the fact that they would receive so many letters of inquiry, as to make it very disagreeable to them. I have the original and complete letters in my possession, and such letters I am prepared to show at any time. My object in presenting this testimony here, is to show that the system of bee management recommended herein is not only successful with me, but with all intelligent bee keepers, as well.
A gentleman from Vermont writes me, under date of September 15, 1879, as follows: "I take this opportunity of informing you of the experience I have had with the bee hive received from you. About the 10th of May I transferred a swarm of bees from a box hive to the Controllable Hive. I transferred all the brood combs, and about eight or ten pounds of honey. I fed them until flowers were plenty, which encouraged them to build rapidly. About the 25th of May I put in surplus boxes on the sides, which they soon entered, and went to work. The middle of June I put boxes on top, as the bees showed symptoms of swarming. By the 10th of July the side boxes were nearly all filled, and the bees were at work in the top boxes. July 15th I took off sixteen of the twenty side boxes, well filled and capped, and placed empty ones in their places. August 5th, I took six of the ten boxes off the top, well filled. Then the dry weather set in, and the bees came to a stand-still (thinking the honey season over,) but the basswood revived it for a short time, enabling them to fill up the boxes pretty full. I obtained in all from this swarm twenty-eight boxes, weighing one hundred and ten pounds. I shall have ten hives made this winter for use the coming spring."
A gentleman writes from New York, under date of April 2d, 1879: "I have received your hive, which meets my ideas of what a bee hive should be. It contains all that is required in a bee hive, or in other words it is just the thing I have been wanting. I have been using the Quinby hive, so called, but I am now going to keep bees in earnest on your plan. I have the fullest confidence of success with your hive and plan of management. Your plan for wintering is a good one, on scientific principles, and the arrangement for feeding, and surplus honey, can't be beat."
A gentleman writes from New Hampshire, under date of April 26th, 1879: "I have tested your hive, and my bees have done first-rate. I believe the hive is just what it is represented. One strong reason why I think so much of your hive is, there were not a dozen bees died in the hive last winter, while three of my first swarms in other hives all died—some of them with fifty pounds of honey in the hive. I have lost some winters as many as fifteen or twenty swarms. I have now tested your hive to my satisfaction, and I do not believe bees will die in it, if your instructions for wintering are carried out. I think your hive is what every bee keeper should have to make a success of bee keeping."