In this department will be answered those questions needing IMMEDIATE
attention, and such as are not of sufficient special interest to
require replies from the 20 or more apiarists who help to make “Queries
and Replies” so interesting on another page. In the main, it will
contain questions and answers upon matters that particularly interest
beginners.--ED.
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?