July 28, 1904. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



S21 



queen below." Which is another way of saying that after 

 that length of time he took the queen from above and put 

 her below. 



It is not an unusual thing for bees, when excited, to 

 ball their own queen for safety, and it is a pretty good plan 

 to let them alone, and in nine cases out of ten she will nut 

 be hurt. Smoking a balled queen will free the queen pro- 

 viding the smoker be held far enough away. But hot 

 smoke will pretty surely cause the bees to kill her. 





Hasty's Afterthoughts 





'■ Old Reliable " seen through New and Unreliable Glasses. 

 By E. E. Hasty, Sta. B Rural, Toledo, Ohio. 



THE FAST-GROWING EUCALYPTUS. 



A planted tree 4 feet in diameter and 150 feet high is 

 pretty well for 25 years of growth even in California — 6 feet 

 a year vertically and 2 inches of diameter. Long live the 

 eucalyptus ! With cottonwood and eucalyptus some of 

 southern California is now getting along better for fuel 

 than some of northwest Ohio is. Just think of it once. 

 How much better it is to exercise forethought and produce 

 things than it is wantonly to destroy them I Page 422. 



DARKENING AND GRANULATING SECTION HONEV. 



Betsinger, at the Onondaga convention, let loose three 

 ideas of decided interest. I'll change them to questions. 

 Will jarring a white section make it look darker — by caus- 

 ing the honey to touch the front? Will old honey carried 

 up from below cause the new honey it is mixed with to 

 candy ? A trifle of candied honey in the cells of an empty 

 section — can it ever be got out so perfectly that the new 

 honey put in it will not be stimulated to candy ? Page 423. 



SCIENTISTS AND FORMALDEHYDE. 



People whom we have to call scientists are now very 

 numerous, and it is written, " Many men of many minds." 

 Doubtful if you could scare up a single doctrine so absurd 

 but that some scientists would support it. 'Spects that we 

 shall have to stick to the idea that formaldehyde is itselj a 

 destroyer of microscopic life until more than one scientist 

 (and more than a few of them) say it isn't. No harm to 

 suppose that formic acid is still more destructive. The 

 main trouble with destroying vapors is to get them to pene- 

 trate where they are wanted ; and that difficulty is not 

 going to be overcome by letting them right loose to go 

 away. Page 406. 



IDEAS AT THE FOIJNDATION OF THINGS. 



All'ee same like me-digestive powers poor— is the field- 

 working bee according to Robert West, of Jamaica experi- 

 ment station. Leaves off nursing the brood and goes to 

 work in the fields on that account. During a grand honey- 

 flow is fed partly-digested food by the younger bees of bet- 

 ter digestion. These are brilliant ideas, partly proven- 

 ideas that go down to the foundation of things. Of course, 

 they should be further tested and settled. As a more trilling 

 matter we note positive evidence that drones in the hive do 

 not always have to be fed. This will allow us to be a little 

 more open to recent testimony that drones have been seen 

 helping themselves to nectar from the flowers. Page 407. 



ESCORT BEES AND INTRODUCING QUEENS. 



Irving Long's plan of immediately removing the escirt 

 bees of a queen and substituting others from the hive ;o 

 which sheis to be introduced— I guess that's pretty certainly 



good as far as it goes. Whether it is worLh enough to pay 

 for the additional trouble I'm not so sure. Shouldn't won- 

 der if it was. You see, if the lady is going to misbehave 

 herself because she doesn't like the smell of her new sub- 

 jects, it's much better for her to get through all that sort of 

 thing in the cage, before a small audience too much fright- 

 ened to resent it. Page 413. 



WRONG KIND OF MAN AND THE BEE-KEEPINf, SISTER. 



So just the wrong kind of man to marry her can make 

 the bee-keeping sister more trouble than a whole lot of bees. 

 Ho, hum, hum ! I don't see how I can prove the contrary 

 of that, and so I'll just let it stand. Page 409. 



SULPHUR FOR MOTHS AND OTHER VERMIN. 



A little while ago we heard how to sprinkle sulphur on 

 the floor of a hive and keep away the moth from the combs 

 in store there. Now we hear that sprinkling sulphur 

 around the corncrib, and some over the corn, will keep rats 

 and mice out. Natural inference that a similar sprinkling 

 will of course keep the mice out of one's racks of empty 

 extracting-combs. Why, O why, don't the Russians sprin- 

 kle a little sulphur over Manchuria, and drive all those 

 troublesome Japs away ? Page 395. 



TAR-PAPERED WINTER-CASE FOR SUMMER AND WINTER. 



Mr. Kilgore reports that his tar-paper which serves as 

 roof for winter-cases, and then as substitute for roof to the 

 hive proper in summer, has continued weatherproof four 

 years. Pretty good. To make the winter-case serve as 

 both shade-board and roof is quite an econoipy. Page 379. 





Dr. Miller's Answers 



Send Questions either to the office of the American Bee Journal 

 or to Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 



Bees Not Going Into The Super. 



I have 3 colonies of bees that I purchased for pure Ital- 

 ians. When I received them last spring they were appar- 

 ently in fine condition ; they had each swarmed once, but 

 have not even started to work in the supers. They do not 

 seem to go up into the super at all, but seem to be working 

 all right. 



Is there anything I can do to help the matter? I have 

 had but little experience, but I try to gain all the informa- 

 tion I can from books and the American Bee Journal. 



Illinois. 



Answer.— That swarming would hinder super-work, 

 especially if you did not put the swarm on the old stand. 

 You can do something to hasten the start in supers by put- 

 ting a bait-section in each super— a section containing 

 some comb. Probably you have none, so you can give them 

 something even better. Take a frame out of the hive, cut 

 out a piece of brood an inch by three or four inches, and 

 set it in the bottom of one of the center sections. That will 

 bring them up into the super, sure, and whether they store 

 any there depends on whether there is anything more to 

 store than they can find room to store in the brood- 

 chamber. -..* 



Farm Bee-Keeplng-Otner Questions. 



1. When a man keeps only a few colonies, in connec- 

 tion with his farm work, as I do, how can he get the most 



honey ? 



2. I had a colony the past spring that I noticed was not 



