Aug. 11, 1904. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



553 



robbing going on, and it has never failed to stop it for me. 

 I close the entrance to one bee-space, and the home bees will 

 kill the robber-bees and pitch them out of the hive. 



When the weather was cool and cloudy I fed my bees in 

 little troughs that kept them busy when there was no nectar 

 in the flowers. We have had so much rain that it has not 

 been a very good season for the bees. The supers are not 

 much nearer full than they were a month ago, but the hives 

 are crowded with bees. After the rains, when the sun comes 

 out clear and bright, the bees rush to the fields, which are a 

 mass of white clover, that has been in bloom since May 11. 

 The fields look almost like fields of snow. In the fall we 

 have the Spanish-needle, and the whole country looks like a 

 field of gold. It is such rich honey — not strong like the 

 buckwheat. 



I have been transferring my bees from the home-made 

 hives to thedovetail hives this spring. I set a hive with a 

 frame of brood and full sheets of foundation — or, better, a 

 hive full of drawn-out comb — under the box-hive, and the 

 queen soon takes possession of it. I smoke the bees down 

 from the top of the box-hive, so that they will all go into 

 the lower hive. I then set the box-hive on another hive 

 prepared as before, except that I put a queen-cell in a cell- 

 protector in the new hive, and as the brood hatch out they 

 go down. Enough bees will go to the box-hive to keep the 

 brood warm. I set the new arrangement by the side of the 

 hive containing the queen, so that the bees adjust them- 

 selves in a day or so, and the new hive (with its box-hive) 

 can then be removed to a new place. The bees will stay 

 with the brood, and by the time the queen is hatched the 

 brood is about all hatched, too. The box-hive can then be 

 done away with. 



The first swarm I ever caught clustered in an apple- 

 tree on a large limb, near the trunk of the tree. I put a 

 frame of brood in a hive, put the cover on and set the hive 

 on a limb above the swarm. They all went in, and the 

 worker-bees went off to the field and came back in the even- 

 ing. I then set the hive on the bottom-board on the ground 

 under the tree, and after dark I brought it back to the bee- 

 yard. 



I saw an interesting sight last summer. One day I took 

 an extracting super off the hive and found a good deal of 

 burr-comb on the underside. The worker-bees and drones 

 were thick over the broken cells. They mended it all nicely 

 before they left. The drones would spread their legs around 

 the cells and pull them into shape, pressing with their heads 

 and hind part of the abdomen. They worked as hard as the 

 worker-bees, but in a different way. It looked very funny 

 to see them pulling and patting the cells into shape. If the 

 drones do not gather honey why do they go so busily back 

 and forth to the field with the worker-bees ? 



How can one tell when a colony wants to supersede ^ 

 queen ? and when the bees want to swarm ? 



(Miss) B. Louisa Hackvi^orth. 



Bates Co., Mo., July 21. 



You are to be congratulated on freedom from swarming, 

 but you must remember that the season may have some- 

 thing to do with it. Last year was one of the worst seasons 

 we ever had for swarming, and this year there is very little 

 inclination that way. 



Seeing that you have done so well using the cone in the 

 sheet getting bees out of supers, you might do still better 

 to go a step farther and use the Miller tent-escape. 



Your plan of transferring is evidently original, and it 

 is bright. Your smoking down the bees out of the box-hive 

 into the new hive is practically the regular driving, only 

 you do it the reverse of the usual way, which is to turn the 

 box-hive upside down and smoke and drum the bees up into 



the new hive. When bees are thus stampeded they natur- 

 ally go up rather than down. 



In some cases there might be danger that after the 

 driving there would be so few bees left in the bos-hive that 

 not enough would go down to care properly for the frame 

 of brood with its queen-cell. 



Those drones evidently had a plot made up to deceive 

 you, pretending they were hard at work when they were not 

 doing a thing. Please watch closely again, and see if any 

 particle of the wax is actually moved when they appear to 

 be working it with their legs. 



When queen-cells are started you can not alwaj's tell 

 whether the bees mean to swarm, or merely supersede their 

 queen ; but you can judge something by the number of 

 cells. For swarming there will be a goodly number ; for 

 superseding, a very few, perhaps only one. 



You will make a good bee-keeper. You have a good 

 deal of originality, and seem to do quite a bit of thinking 

 on your own account, and even if you do make mistakes you 

 will come out ahead in the end. 



We shall be glad to hear from you again. 





Dr. Miller's Answers 





Send Questions either to the ofBoe of the American Bee Journal, 

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



Wiring Frames with Starters-Hiving Swarms- 

 Keeping Ants Out of Hives. 



1. Is it necessary to wire frames that have an inch 

 foundation starter ? 



2. I brought a swarm home from the woods and hived 

 them, putting a frame of brood from another colony in with 

 them. Was that right ? 



3. What will keep ants out of the hive ? Vermont. 

 Answers.— 1. Not at all. 



2. Yes, a frame of brood is a good start toward house- 

 keeping, and often makes them more contented. 



3. The surest thing is to have the hive-stand with legs, 

 each one standing in an old can or something of the kind 

 kept filled with water or oil. In some parts of the South 

 ants will utterly destroy a colony of bees ; but I think the 

 ants that you have can be kept at bay bjr the bees them- 

 selves without any help from you. They make their nests 

 about hives mainly for the warmth and only where bees 

 can not get at them, and do no real hurt. 



Selling Honey to Boarding-Hoases. 



Why do they not use honey in boarding-houses? In 

 the locality where I market my honey I cannot sell to them. 

 A few weeks ago. by hard begging, I did get one lady who 

 kept a boarding-house, to buy 30 cents worth of honey. I 

 coaxed her to get it so that I might be able to say that I had 

 sold honey to one boarding-house. When I call at a board- 

 ing-house to sell honey about the first I hear is, " It's no 

 use. We don't want any honey. We don't like it, and the 

 boarders will not eat it." Probably they will refer to one 

 " star " boarder who likes it. One of the cities in which I 

 sell my honey has a population of 25,000 or 30,000, and it is 

 full of boarding-houses, but I cannot sell honey to any of 

 them. I do not understand it. I have thought of making 

 a canvass of the city, asking the proprietors of the board- 

 ing-houses why they do not use honey. Do you think they 

 would tell me ? I have come to a decision in my own mind 



