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