Chapter 2
Section 2 of Constructive Beekeeping. This is LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Van Lance, Woodstock, Alabama.
Constructive Beekeeping by Ed Clark. Section 2. Wax. Also, when from whatever cause, the bees have a lot of sealed honey around the brood nest, and because the empty outside combs are too cold for work, they will not remove the honey to these to enable the queen to lay.
This is the condition of the colony, where spreading the brood makes more room. Also, that makes a colony in a 16-frame hive take on the urge. To understand this condition, a knowledge of the relation of temperature to wax working is necessary. To work and build with wax requires a temperature nearly as high as that maintained in the brood nest, and when any part of the hive is colder than it is consistent for easy work with wax,
The bees, if they work on wax at all, do it in the warmer part of the hive. It must be borne in mind that the bees, like all other creatures, do things mostly in the line of least resistance. It is easier to work wax where it is warm than where it is cold. Hence, we find the bees starting on the center combs in the second super, before finishing the outside ones in the first.
The beekeeper who puts boards with slits on either side for the bees to enter the super from the brood chamber produces a condition that sends the warm air from the brood chamber up through the sleds, thereby giving the bees a good temperature to work on outside combs. Beekeepers who produce healthier honey in England, because of the cold nights, put a covering over and around the supers to keep them warm.
Otherwise, poor results follow. It has been demonstrated that combs can be built down to the bottom bar in a super better than in a brood chamber with an opening at the bottom front. and here again temperature plays its part. Knowing the relation of temperature to working in wax,
it can readily be seen how a colony with plenty of hive room may be crowded for brood room and acquire the urge. Caging the queen gives more room, but brings on the urge and may result in swarming. Removal of the brood and substituting foundation or draw comb
gives laying room to the queen. These are good examples of destructive beekeeping. How much better the colony could get ahead had they hives so constructed and protected from outside weather conditions that they could evaporate the water from their honey and store it away from the brood nest. Shaking the bees gives ample room, but that's artificial swarming.
Removing the water from the nectar and giving the bees an opportunity to store this ripened nectar in fewer cells makes more room, and when this can be accomplished soon after the bees' last strip to the field, it shortens their hours of work, adds to their comfort, and perhaps lengthening their lives. It is just as necessary for the economy of their domestic arrangement that they have room sufficient and warm enough to ripen the honey
as for storage of ripened honey and brood. Brood frames cannot be ignored in constructive beekeeping because they have so close a relation to the room in the hive. The nearer and the number of worker cells in all of the frames approach the maximum, the more room the hive contains.
Frames not filled to the bottom bar and frames containing drone comb will, together with other conditions, make just enough difference in the hive room to bring on the urge. A 10-frame hive under these conditions has but little more room than 8 full frames.
The size of a hive, no matter what its dimensions, is expressed in the number of worker cells it contains. A hive, with but from 40 to 50,000 worker cells, must not be thought of as a standard hive even though it has 10 standard frames. Empty spaces inside the frames make an extra expense to the beekeeper and an added burden on the bees.
They have fully one-fourth more space to keep warm in a hive with bee space and frames than they have in a box hive of the same dimensions. Another way a constructive principle can be applied to the frame is to reduce the top bar to the same thickness as the bottom bar. beekeepers are convinced that 10 frames are not enough for a good laying queen.
Therefore, some advocate giving more room above by adding another hive body, others giving more room on the side, using a wider hive body, while some make the hive higher, wider, and longer. The longer hive body, it is claimed, gives better results when used in producing extracted honey, but it can never become a standard hive because a great number of beekeepers produce honeycomb.
The tin frame or standard hive being the best for most purposes, it remains for the beekeeper, when he gives more room, to give the bees a brood nest with as little space between comb and comb where the brood bodies meet as possible. Considering that all the combs in the hive body given above are built down to the bottom bar,
we have at the junction of the two hive bodies a space between comb and comb of top bar, bee space and bottom bar or about one and a half inches. From experiments it has been observed that a thick top bar is a fairly good queen excluder. Hence it is apparent that more or less of an effort is required to pass over this space. When this is reduced by a thin top bar an easier passage for the queen and bees is made and better results will follow. In smoothing out
little difficulties like these, we are always amply repaid. For the same reason, all comb should be built down to the bottom bar with the cells overlapping top and bottom bars of the respective hive bodies. The bee space is all that separates comb from comb. The thin top bar adds more cells to the hive, so adding its might to the economy of the hive and giving the bees nearly continuous comb from top to bottom of the hive. Ventilation. One of the axioms of beekeeping is ventilation.
No matter what other manipulations the beekeeper recommends to prevent swarming, he always adds ventilate. Why do the bees require so much fresh air in May and June when they have double the capacity of airspace within the hive that they have in October and November? The air in the hive serves a twofold purpose. It supplies the bees with oxygen and influences the amount of water vapor the hive can contain. This water vapor is given off in the ripening of honey and the
breathing of the bees. It is either removed from the hive by ventilation or carried to the walls and ceiling where it is condensated and is used by the bees for domestic purposes. Ventilation is constructive in principles when the nights are warm and the atmosphere comparatively dry. It is destructive when the nights are cold and the atmosphere nearly saturated with moisture. Only the best beekeepers can, by ventilation, maintain that nice balance that accords with
temperature and strength of the colony. During the season, when the bees are most likely to acquire the urge, the nights are colder and the humidity of the air greater than later in the season. At such times, a cold current of air throughout the hive interferes with the rearing of brood and does not help much in the ripening of honey. Each day of good honey gathering, bringing the colony nearer to a crowded condition. No beekeeper finds it practicable to change the
ventilation as the temperature changes, but must rely on his judgment of the amount that gives best results. The manipulations of divisible brood chambers can be considered under the head of ventilation. When the two sections of brood chamber have been broken apart or exchanged, the percentage of colonies that acquire the urge has been reduced. This can readily be explained by showing how it makes for ventilation.
If it is done prior to the urge, it will have a tendency to reduce swarming. Altering apart from hive bodies from each other and from other forms or bottom boards leaves a rough surface to the adjoining parts, the result of dirt, grass, or bees adhering to the propolis. When the hive is again put together, the adjoining surfaces are not tight, and ventilation is the result.
The result of ventilation is room. Because ventilation has given more room, we have all believed in it. Room can be given by ventilation, but at the expense of a warm hive. The velocity of the wind and shape and size of the entrance must be studied in their relations to one another when considering ventilation. The ill effects from winds, even with reducing entrances, is sometimes apparent.
A bunch of grass or a shrub, sometimes two or three feet away from the entrance, may deflect and send a current of air right into the hive, or it may produce a calm at the entrance. The only possible way to have uniform ventilation is to have a good windbreak. If the hives are so situated as to be in a calm at all times, then what ventilation there is is regular. but hives so situated are troubled with excessive swarming.
With any wind at all blowing, no two hives in a row, nor in different rows, even those that have the same size openings, will have the same ventilation. To anyone who has tried to follow the course of air moving along the surface and a few feet above the earth, winding in and out among obstructions, sometimes flying off at a tangent, sometimes circling all around, sometimes upward or downward,
bounding and rebounding from such obstructions. It is apparent that air currents among the hives in an apiary are so complex as to be past our understanding. But this shows, with what little certainty, ventilation can be made, anyway, uniform. Hence the different results at different times from apparently similar treatments.
Shade in the afternoon has been proven to be somewhat of a preventative of the urge. This is clearly explained by the laws governing condensation of water vapor, and will be treated in the chapter under that head. Ventilation and shade each make more room in the hive, which leads me to remark that ventilation is constructive at the proper time
and under the right atmospheric conditions, but it is destructive in spring and early summer because of the low temperature and moisture-laden atmosphere. Air that is already full of moisture will be of little use in drying the air of the hive. To demonstrate this, a wet cloth can be hung by the hive on a night of high relative humidity,
and in the morning it will be far from dry. It will require no great reasoning on the part of anyone to see that the water vapor of the hive is not carried away by ventilation. Swarming During a heavy flow of honey, the queen will gradually, and sometimes sharply, reduces the number of eggs laid per day.
We know that had the same thing happened during the spring, building up of the colony, it would have brought on the urge. Someone will point to the above statement as a contradiction of one that the urge is the direct result of the actual or apparent failure of the queen. We know from observation that they are almost sure to swarm in spring or early summer
when this condition exists. In summer, with an abundant honey flow and plenty of room, they rarely swarm. In the fall, they quietly supersede the queen.
It's obvious that the aim or object for which they strive in each of the three periods mentioned is not the same, and that the aim or object attained as the collective results
of these three periods is that for which all bees are striving, the survival of the colony. During the spring period, the one purpose for which they strive is numbers. Every atom of concerted energy of the colony is
working to increase the unit strength of the colony. When we consider the advantage that numbers give for offense and defense and general welfare, we know that they are urged on by the law of the survival of the fittest. After this carnival of brood rearing, when weather and fuel conditions prompt their instinct to a realization that winter is ahead and only the colonies that are fittest to survive, we have the energy of the colony directed as a unit to
gathering stores. The brood rearing this period is a secondary consideration and about keeps pace with the bees that fall from the ranks. The next period has brood rearing and general preparation for the winter on its schedule. This brood rearing does not take on the riotous nature of the spring period. There's no definite line or date dividing these periods. They dovetail into one another and only by close observation and much bee wisdom is a person able to detect the change of colony
procedure as the bees pass from the spring to the summer period. Because of the inability of the ordinary beekeeper to sense this, he has not been uniformly successful in the production of comb honey. In passing from one period to the other, the colony work fades from rearing brood to gathering honey, then back again to rearing brood. This change depends as much or more on strength and good condition of the colony as on weather and field conditions. The beekeeper, not being able
to tell the exact time that each particular colony is prepared to take on the work of the next period, assumes that they take on the urge in the summer period when contraction of the brood takes place. The rearing of queens by the colony cannot be considered an acquired habit. We have to admit that it is both for the reproduction of the colony and the species and goes back to the very origin of life. The strongest desire or urge in all life is to reproduce its kind. If this desire
is destroyed in a species, that species becomes extinct. It is an impossibility to breed a swarmless bee. If it could be done, all ambition, vim, and energy would disappear, and as much could be accomplished with so many inanimate units. The main thing in life is reproduction. All other things are done for the better bringing it about. Increase and multiply is the urge of all things living,
so that each generation is greater in numbers and wisdom than the preceding. As generation after generation succeeds one another, the acquirements of one when they are advantageous to the next puts that next generation astride forward in the battle for existence. The colonies in which this acquired habit took hold succeeded best,
and we realize that this development has been going on for countless years, by slow evolution we can believe that the bees have acquired habits that are of advantage to them in their mode of life. Swarming is one of these habits, and should we be able to breed it out, they would be thrown back to their way of life or social development
that existed in the colony before they acquired this habit. A colony of bees cannot be considered in the scheme of reproduction as the same as individuals. Individuals are being born regularly in the colony, but through an acquired habit the colony carries on what may be called limited birth control by preventing the perfect development of the female.
Conditions that induce the colony to start queen cells or allow perfect development is what we must control to prevent the urge. The bees in their wild states seldom had a home that did not at some time become filled to its capacity. They developed a habit, as we know, of putting off reproduction of the colony while conditions in the home were such that the strength of the colony could be increased,
but letting it take place normally when the home conditions were getting crowded. Sometimes the home was of such size that this did not occur for several seasons, but eventually the home became crowded from accumulated honey and swarming resulted. The smaller the hive, the sooner the urge. The smaller colonies that came from smaller homes did not survive as often as the stronger ones,
that had more time and room to prepare. Hence, we have bees with the habit of putting off swarming as long as hive conditions permit. The act of swarming must be considered a protest against a condition in the hive. Could we keep a colony of bees with a good queen and plenty of necessary room, we would have no swarms.
It has been done, so it's not impossible. End of section 2. Thank you.
