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Entered at the Post-Office at Chicago as Second-Class Mail-Matter. 

 Published ^Veekly at $1.00 a Year by George W. York & Co., 334 Dearborn St. 



QBORae W. YORK, Editor. 



CHICAGO, ILL, SEPT, 1, 1904. 



Vol. XLIV— No. 35, 





Editorial Comments 





Foul-Brood Legislation in England. 



This seems to be the leading- topic in the British Bee 

 Journal at the present time. In this country there is 

 scarcely a dissenting voice among bee-keepers themselves 

 as to the desirability of strict foul-brood laws ; the only 

 trouble is to get the legislatures to wake up enough to act. 

 But in England bee-keepers themselves are very much 

 divided, those who have had no experience with the disease 

 thinking that it can be fought by individual effort. To this 

 a writer in the British Bee Journal pertinently replies : 



Of what use is care, cleanliness, new blood, strong colo- 

 nies, special treatment, when your skep neighbor over the 

 hedge has a hotbed and hatchery of the disease capable of 

 contaminating a -whole countryside, so that your strong 

 colonies are decimated in spite of your persistent and pains- 

 taking efforts ? 



Showing perhaps better than anything else the divided 

 opinion in that country is a circular sent out to the various 

 county associations by the Council of the British Bee-Keep- 

 ers' Association asking to be told : 



1. If your Association is, or is not, in favor of legisla- 

 tion ? 



2. Will your County Council support, or put in force, an 

 Act, if obtained ? 



3. Is your Association prepared to contribute toward 

 the cost of securing a Bill, and if so, what sum ? 



The preliminary cost of getting an Act through parlia- 

 ment, if indeed action can be secured at all, is estimated at 

 from «7S0 to $2500. 



All of which should give a very comfortable feeling to 

 the bee-keepers in those States which, with so much less 

 trouble and expense, have secured efficient laws on this im- 

 portant matter. Let the good work not flag, however ; so 

 long as there is a single State in the Union without an effi- 

 cient foul-brood law, that State is a menace to every other 

 State. 



Get the Sections Finished Up. 



When working for section honey it is desirable to have 

 a few unfinished sections left over as baits for the next sea- 

 son, but usually there are more of such baits than are de- 

 sired. The outer sections, and especially the corner ones, 

 are the last to be finished, and it is the practice of some to 

 take off a super without waiting for these laggards. Then 

 the unfinished sections are massed in a super and returned 

 to the bees to be finished, such supers of sections being 



dubbed "go-backs" by Dr. Miller. He claims that good 

 work is done in getting these "go-backs" finished, the 

 supers of them not being distinguishable from other supers 

 of sections except by the word "gob " (short for " go-back '") 

 penciled on one of the central sections. 



S. T. Pettit thinks there is no need for uneven work, 

 using perforated followers at each side of the super, thus 

 getting the outside sections finished as soon as the others. 



Building Cells Upon Capped Cells. 



Every bee-keeper knows that a honey-comb has two 

 sets of cells, one on each side of the septum, and some have 

 noticed that occasionally there is a third set. If a comb of 

 honey is sealed over, and then moved so that there is any 

 considerable space more than a quarter of an inch between 

 it and the opposing surface, the bees may commence build- 

 ing another set of cells right upon the sealed surface. It 

 is well to know that every drop of honey contained in the 

 cells thus covered over by the extra set of cells is a dead 

 loss, and might just as well be so much wood. The bees 

 seem to think that when they come to the bottom of these 

 surface cells they have reached the septum, and there is no 

 use to try to go farther ; and they may starve with at least 

 a little honey easily in reach. So when you find comb built 

 over cappings, be sure to dig down through the cappings, if 

 it be only to punch a small hole into each cell. 



Rate of Bees' Flight. 



D. M. M., one of the leading correspondents of the 

 British Bee Journal, thinks that bees, when going out with- 

 out a load, may go as fast as 30 miles an hour, or a mile in 

 two minutes; but returning they may take anywhere from 

 5 to 10 minutes for a mile. He says : 



I have what I consider fairly reliable proof that they 

 can travel 30 miles an hour, but I can adduce no evidence 

 to prove it, While I believe that they can do so, however, 

 I am quite confident that they rarely do. My belief is that, 

 though in making for the foraging grounds, they easily 

 travel a mile in three minutes, yet on their return they fre- 

 quently take double that time ; and I know, on occasions, 

 they may take ten minutes. I have watched them hundreds 

 of times approaching home heavily laden, and I know that 

 for a considerable distance I have paced them at the above 

 speed. In watching them leaving or returning to their 

 hives, I made elaborate observations for given distances, 

 and these bore me out in these conclusions. 



Looking for Queen-Cells. 



With not a few bee-keepers, especially of those who 

 work for comb honey, one of the chief labors of the honey 

 season is looking for queen-cells. It is no small help to 

 know where to look for cells. No need to look in the center 

 of a comb evenly filled with brood for cells prepared for 



