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.