Dec. 1, 1904. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



807 



than any other thing they bought. I believe that is the 

 true reason. They will give you another reason, that the 

 boarders do not like honey ! 



Mr. Reinecke — We found it very difficult to sell honey 

 in our section : but we put it up in small quantities and got 

 the people to start, and afterwards got them to take large 

 quantities. 



Mr. Niver (111.) — Right in line with this work in con- 

 nection with the boarding-house and hotel-keeper who think 

 it is too costly altogether, one gentleman suggests to me 

 it is a lack of tact. Perhaps it is, but I had tact enough 

 "to convince them on a few occasions that it is really as eco- 

 nomical as anything they can put on the table. They will 

 buy cheap syrups, but honey being so very rich they take 

 very little of it, and I really believe it is a very cheap and 

 •economical food. I am simply talking shop. I don't think 

 the boarding-house keeper can be brought to a realizing 

 sense of his iniquities at all ; he is incorrigible. 



Mr. Gary (Mo.) — Years ago I asked a hotel -keeper why 

 he didn't have honey on the table, and he informed me that 

 it was not put up in the same shape as other relishes ; he 

 said if it was put up in that shape it would be put on the 

 table. We then had prepared at our expense a decanter of 

 •extracted honey, and that hotel to-day, at every meal, has 

 these decanters on the table. They said. If we have to buy 

 it in five-gallon cans or barrels it would be too expensive to 

 place on the table and to keep away the flies from it. I 

 think if we would adopt a suitable decanter, and place a 

 suitable quality of honey therein, so that the restaurant or 

 liotel-keeper can put it on the table, more of it would be 

 iound on our different hotel tables to-day. 



Mr. Hyde — My wife has been stopping at a boarding- 

 house in San Antonio, and as soon as they found a bee- 

 keeper was stopping there the boarders began asking for 



honey, and the landlady " got onto it " and ordered a case 

 of honey. 



Dr. Miller — The question was whether bee-keepers 

 should patronize a boarding-house that did not use honey, 

 and we have gone to the germane question which is not 

 perhaps strictly out of order, whatever influence we can 

 have upon the public in general in getting them to use 

 honey as an article of daily food will bear upon the board- 

 ing-house. I doubt very much whether anything will be 

 gained by making an attack upon the boarding-houses 

 themselves. A boarding-house will have butter upon the 

 table, and if there were none there would be a row right 

 straight, because people are in the habit of having butter 

 upon the table at home and wherever they are. Our efforts 

 should be made not upon the boarding-house but upon the 

 public in general, and when you get everybody to want to 

 have honey on the table every day there will be no trouble. 



R. Secor (111.)— I am not only a bee-keeper but I sell 

 groceries. I make the acquaintance of traveling men, and 

 make it a point to say, " Boys, if there is no honey on the 

 table ask for it ". And they have invariably done so, and I 

 would see the hotel people the next day and say, " Can't I 

 sell you a case of honey "7 And the hotel-keeper would 

 say, " I don't care if you do. What is it worth "? I would 

 say, "$3 a case, if you return the case in good order". In 

 that way I keep honey in the hotels all the time in my 

 locality. 



Mr. York — I believe as Dr. Miller said, the way to get 

 hotel-keepers and restaurant-keepers to have honey on the 

 table is for us all to call for it. 



Mr. Krebs— I find you can talk honey any place and 

 any time you please, and people become very much inter- 

 ested. I think a good plan would be to get the people in- 

 terested. 



(Coatlnued next week.) 



Some Things I Have Learned in Bee- 

 Keeping. 



BY ADRIAN GKTAZ. 



FREQUENTLY the editors of our bee-papers request 

 their readers to tell what they have learned by actual 

 experience during the previous season. I do not re- 

 member ever having complied with the request until now, 

 and to make amends for my carelessness I will go back 

 some time. 



A FALL HONBY-FLOW 



The fall of 1902 was the only one of all my 19 years of 

 ■faee-keeping in which there was a flow of nectar heavy 

 enough to furnish a surplus worth speaking of. The 

 weather was too cool to admit anything like working in 

 sections. So if any surplus was to be taken it was to be in 

 the form of extracted honey. But I had not the combs and 

 supers necessary for that work. I have tried hives and 

 frames of all shape and dimensions, and I have yet a half- 

 dozen different kinds. All, however, have large brood- 

 nests, the equivalent of from 10 to 13 Langstroth frames. 

 At that time of the year the weather being cool, the brood- 

 nest is more or less contracted. So I was able to extract 

 •one, two or three of the outside combs. In a few ca-^ses I 

 repeated the operation, and the bees had yet time to refill 

 their combs for the winter. 



EXTRAORDINARY SWARMING. 



All the readers of this paper know what extraordinary 

 swarming occurred in 1903. In the Northern States it took 

 ■place at the usual time of swarming. Here it was different. 

 The usual swarming was over, and, not expecting any 

 ■more, I had removed the queen-traps and ceased to take any 

 precaution. All at once I found that several colonies were 

 swarming unexpectedly. The causes of it are rather diffi- 

 cult to assign. The best I can see is that the weather hav- 

 ing been cool for a week or so, the secretion of wax and 



comb-building in the sections had completely ceased. And 

 when the weather turned warm, and a heavy honey-flow 

 took place, swarming followed. And yet this explanation 

 hardly seems sufficient to meet the case. 



CAGING OUBENS. 



I have several times stated that when a colony swarms 

 destroy the queen and allow the colony to requeen out of its 

 own cells. I think I have always added that while it is the 

 best when only a small number of colonies swarm, it would 

 be objectionable in several respects with a large number. I 

 will not go over the ground again to explain why. 



In that memorable June (1903), I found about one-third 

 of my colonies with queen-cells more or less advanced, a 

 few having swarmed already, out of which three swarms at 

 least had gone to the woods. A wholesale killing of val- 

 uable queens did not exactly suit my notions, so I caged all 

 that I caught. Where I failed to find the queen I destroyed 

 the queen-cells. The caged queens were released a few 

 days after all the brood was sealed. Of the colonies where 

 the queen-cells had been destroyed, a few did not rebuild 

 them, the majority requiring a second queen-cell destruc- 

 tion, and only in a few cases I finally had to replace the 

 queen. 



This is not in accordance with the usual course of 

 events; but I think it can be explained. That swarming 

 was, we may say, abnormal, or caused by exceptional cir- 

 cumstances. When these circumstances ceased, the swarm- 

 ing ceased also. 



FINDING QUEENS. 



After having written as much as I have on finding 

 queens, given "quick and sure " methods to find them, it is 

 rather humiliating to acknowledge that on that occasion I 

 failed to find them in the majority of cases, at least with 

 the hybrids. 



The fact is, that when a colony has the swarming fever, 

 queen, workers, and everybody else are in a state of excite- 

 ment. And when the apiarist opens the hive, the first 



