568 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOLRlNAL. 



Aug. 18, 1904. 



will be occupied with brood. Plain to see that you can not 

 cut away any of this honey without cutting away the brood 

 at the same time, and that wouldn't do at all. To be sure, 

 there might be some combs at the side without any brood, 

 but the amount would not be large. 



I have been told that years ago oily-tongued agents 

 went through the county selling what were called bee- 

 palaces. A bee-palace was something like a mammoth hive 

 with a door in one side. A common box-hive was to be set 

 on the palace, and then the bees were to work down and fill 

 the palace. Then, when the housekeeper had company to 

 tea, and wanted to have a nice plate of white honey to dec- 

 orate her table, she was to go to the bee-palace, open the 

 door, and cut out what she needed, close the door, and 

 proudly go her way. The hives of bees were put on the 

 palaces, but I am not told that the latter part of the pro- 

 gram was ever carried out. 



Boxes might be put over bees in the garret, but if the 

 bees were not confined as in a hive they might not readily 

 enter the boxes. Neither would it be practicable to have 

 them so arranged that the bees would swarm and hive them- 

 selves. They would be little inclined to swarm with un- 

 limited room, but if they should swarm they would go out 

 into the open air and have to be hived like any other swarm. 



Now, if I have made the wrong supposition in the case, 

 please write saying what is meant, and what kind of a 

 brooder you refer to, and I'll try again. 





Nasty's AfCerthoughts 





The " Old Reliable " seen through New and Unreliable Glasses. 

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



LENGTH OF FOUNDATION SPI,INTS. 



Ivots of us, I take it. Dr. Miller, failed to catch on to the 

 idea that your foundation splints might just as well be an 

 eighth of an inch shorter than the space they were to cover, 

 and so be handier to put in. Page 457. 



HONHY-DBW. 



When honey-dew gets so bad that a single comb of it 

 keeps a swarm from running into a hive, one inclines to 

 say, " Not any honey-dew for me." Page 458. 



PROPOLIS IN HEALING SALVES. 



Get a lot of propolis and heat it well, and mix it well 

 with olive-oil. Let the oil have time to extract the virtues 

 of the more solid ingredient ; then heat it real hot and pour 

 it off, leaving behind such of the propolis as shows too much 

 inclination to go to the bottom. This is presumed to be a 

 healing salve when it gets cool. {Anything made into a 

 salve, provided it is not positively injurious, will exclude 

 air and keep out microbes, and thus favor healing.) When 

 I scrape propolis several cool days in succession (propolis 

 reduced to dust gets thick on everything at such times), I 

 find the backs of my hands inclining to get sore. Too much 

 healing power exercised on them, eh ? Page 461. 



THE REAR WOODEN FEEDER. 



The Simplicity wooden feeder, made very much larger 

 and modified in form to put under the back end of a hive, is 

 what we see on page 462. E. W. Alexander likes it after 

 feeding tons of syrup with it ; and that is a pretty strong 

 recommendation. Several at once answer well to feed for 

 winter. I should guess that one strong point of it is that 

 robber-bees drawn by the smell of warm feed bob around at 



a place where they can't possibly get in, and let the entrance 

 alone. Perchance its weak point might be liability to get 

 rotten and spoiled. 



A ROUGH BLUFF ON DUFF. 



Mr. Duff 



He had bluff 



Big enough — 

 Laid up the heathen-idol image of the demijohn with stones, 

 and got it printed in the paper of a Prohibition-candidate 

 editor. AU'ee same his apiary is pretty — and just now he 

 is sober. Page 465. 



FRAMES CROSSVSriSE OF THE HIVE. 



As to frames running " the wrong way of the hive," none 

 of the experts seem inclined to advocate them with any en- 

 thusiasm, and few are very sharply opposed. If the inquisi- 

 tive beginner waw/i to try a few that way nobody will throw 

 bricks. Page 469. 



BEE-TREE LAWS AND JUSTICE. 



John Doe finds bees in a tree belonging to Moses Moe. 

 Marks his name on the tree. Calls on Mr. Moe to get his 

 permission to cut the tree. Moses does not quite want the 

 tree cut down ; talks and talks, but hangs off about giving 

 the permission. Next Richard Roe also finds the bees, cuts 

 the tree, carries off the honey, and then, falsely claiming 

 that John has turned his rights over to him, calls on Moses 

 Moe to settle up. Moses says that is not of very much con- 

 sequence, and that is the last of it so far as he is concerned. 

 (Known to be that sort of a man.) Now the public feeling, 

 which, in this case, is undoubtedly the correct feeling, is 

 that Richard has stolen John's bees. If I understand the 

 article of Henry Klein correctly, law will not touch Richard 

 for anything he has done toward John. Law does not love 

 simple justice so much as it does the consistency of a dry- 

 bones logic. (Richard could not steal till John owned ; and 

 John could not own till he first had them in his power.) In 

 the good time coming courts, lawyers and judges (if there 

 are any such things then) will care more for simple justice 

 than they do for words, names and quillets. They will feel 

 sincere regret, and a measure of humiliation, at every such 

 failure of law to provide justice ; and they will not feel, 

 their personal duty ended till they have got the legislature 

 to prevent a repetition of it. Page 470. 



MIXING VARIETIES OF HONEY — UNRIPENESS. 



Holtermann, in the New York convention, went to the 

 bottom of things more completely than essayists usually do. 

 Good paper. Right that we should guard against mixing 

 two different grades of honey in extracting. But I must 

 nevertheless put in a word for those localities where the 

 crop is small, and all extracted at the end of the season. 

 Hardly practical to keep kinds separate then, the difficulty 

 and fuss of doing so being too great. The loss of being 

 unable to separate the kinds is more than made up by the 

 increased ripeness of the whole. Sometimes bees work 

 lively at bringing in a very poor article quite late and leave 

 a lot of it unsealed. That can be extracted first, before the 

 ripe honey is uncapped. Glad to see Holtermann in har- 

 mony with the best demands for ripeness. Listen once 

 more to this flaming-sworded sentence of his : " Too much 

 of the crop leaves the hive when it is really not honey, but 

 when it is still in its stages between nectar and honey." — 

 Pages 470-472. 



WASH HONEY-EXTRACTOR WHEN NEEDED. 



Surprised (and perhaps the surprise was ?L\\\X\e pleasant) 

 to hear Mr. France say, " Never wash the extractor till you 

 want to use it." I haveoften done according to this maxim, 

 but supposed the conduct to be somewhat disgraceful, and 

 tending to get the tin coating off the inside the implement. 

 Page 472. 



