154 



AMERICAN BEE lOURNAL, 



March 7, 1901. 



I % The Afterthought. ^ | 



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

 By E. E. HASTY, Sta. B Rural, Toledo, O. 



THRKK "WIVES" IN ONE HOUSE. 



Of course we are Schmidtten with desire to know how 

 three (|ueens to one colony are secured, page 71. Was the in- 

 formation withheld on purpose to malce us cry for it? We 

 can see that there are three stories and three entrances. I'll 

 guess that the mid-story has zinc both above and l^elow, and a 

 partition across the middle. But then, but then ; it's one 

 thing to show us how to have three wives in one house without 

 any (juarreling, and quite another thing to prove that such an 

 establishment is wise? or profitable. I can see that a queen- 

 breeder might like to have an excess of tested queens to draw 

 upon. 



WANTED — A NONBUSTABLK UONKY CAN. 



Hut, Mr. Aikin, I don't want to speak well of a honey-can 

 .that will burst unless we wait for the honey to candy before 

 we ship it. Better we insist on a can that will carry liquid 

 honey to market. First you know, we shall learn the art of 

 keeping our honey licjuid pretty much all the time. A non- 

 bustable can will not offend at all your lovers of the granu- 

 lated article— or steal ISIr. Doolittle's thunder and send it to 

 'em in a box. Mr. A. is right on the main point, however. 

 Make your plan and your price according to your situation, 

 and don't be bluft out of it by the brother who has a fancy 

 trade, and who wants you to try the impossible task of bring- 

 ing non-fancy people up to its lines. If you want your honey 

 eaten daily on the poor man's table, you must compete (to 

 some extent) with home-made sugar syrup. If you can sec 

 your way clear to do without the poor man's custom, why, 

 that is your privilege. Page 74. 



BROOD-t'OMH 25 YEARS OLD. 



Editor Ixoot's account of the 25-year-old comb is reassur- 

 ing, and also just what we might expect. Presumably the ex- 

 tra thickness at the bottom is more or less mixt with dried 

 food. I strongly suspect that bees in winter supply themselves 



with a small amount of nitrogenous food by chewing these' 

 dried masses — one reason why old comb winters bees better 

 than new combs — and also the origin of the little heaps of fine 

 stuff we see on the hive-bottoms. Possibly in a land where 

 there was no winter the bottoms would continue to thicken. 

 Even with us an occasional colony does plaster in their cells 

 with black-looking wax till the comb in places is nearly a solid 

 mass. Perhaps that may be much more common in Europe 

 than here. Page 84. 



ENTRANCE-FANNING .\.ND (JUEEN-FINDINO. 



And so it is not at the side where fanning bees are, but at 

 the other side that we are to expect the queen. I made and 

 propagated a very natural mistake : so now let us get our 

 heads level on the subject. By the way, McNeal's correction 

 would be misunderstood by a beginner. Strictly speaking, 

 bees do not force air into a hive ; they fan it out, and other 

 air follows in by the easiest route. May it not be that it is not 

 the bees but the queen that determines this whole little mat- 

 ter '? She feels a current of air, doesn't like it, and directly 

 goes elsewhere. Page 76. 



HOW MANY" BEES DIE IN WINTER. 



Oi) page 88 a beginner asks how many bees die in winter: 

 and Dr. Miller sagely answers, " A whole lot." This suggests, 

 for more than the thousandth time, that we greatly need some 

 common agreement as to what we mean by " the winter." 

 Most of our chunks of wisdom are more or less reduced to fog 

 by the indefiniteuess of that term, if they happen to contain 

 it. A colony of 16,000 bees might get thru December, Janu- 

 ary and February with a loss of only 1,000 — and yet "every 

 man of them"' die before May 10th. In this case one man 

 would say, "Only a small proportion of my bees died in the 

 winter;'' and another would say, " The winter killed 'em, all 

 dead as nails ;" and both these men would be telling the truth. 

 Can't we fix things, brethren, so a man can tell a lie when he 

 tries ■? We seem to have three winters. The greater one be- 

 gins when daily flight ceases, say Oct. 10, and ends when they 

 begin to build up in numbers, say May 1st. (One bad winter 

 I noted that May 6th was the lowest point with my bees.) 

 The lesser winter is of course the three months usually desig- 

 nated as "winter months.' 'Then there is an intermediate sort 

 of winter which has its beginning Dec. 1st, and its end any- 

 where the season and the speaker may happen to put it — usu- 

 ally at the warm spell which brings in the first pollen — some- 

 times in March, and sometimes in April. Somebody tell us 

 what we would better do about it. 



Northern Seed Grain-i 



imlli'.,,-,a[i.lbil\ci Kiut; l^aih-y ut /Jc iutlo bu. lots. 

 Iiite Ilullc-ris bill ley and speltzatifl in :iO bu. lut-. 

 [1. millet or •'UillionDoUjir Grass" at 81.75 per bu. 

 Order quick. Free catalog tells of all kmds 



ffon^ ro 



BUVA 



F-iUow instructions cari'tuUy. 



1st. SendforiiurlarKefreecatalot; 

 pf vehicles and harness. 



2na. Select the rit; you want and 

 irder it on our lo Days Free Trial. 



Jrd. After trying it, if perfectly 

 s,-itisfic(l that it is tlie best bargain you 

 evrr saw tor the money, draw $75 out of 

 tlie liaiik. (live yourwife $27 for pin-money 

 and send us the $48 and you wiUhave the 

 best S7."j rij:^ you ever 

 is the two profits 

 — dealer's and job- 

 ber's—you save in 

 buying from the 

 factory. 'Write for 

 our large illustrat- 

 ed catalogue and 

 follow directiona 

 carefully. 

 Kalamazoo Carriage and Harness Co. 



Box S3, Kalamazoo, Mich. 



Please raentign Bee Journal when writina 



Good Report Bee-Hive Incubator. 



I started in the bee-business last spring with 

 11 colonies of bees, and put 26 into winter 

 (luarters in the cellar, and they seem to be 

 wintering all right. I sold three colonies dur- 

 ing the summer to an old bee-keeper, and got 

 about 0.50 pounds of honey all in one-pound 

 sections, which I sold in the home market at 

 l."i nuts per pound. 



,\l.v bees are all "well-bred." I boufjlit 

 some queens last summer from some of our 

 noted queen-breeders, and I don't see much 

 difference between them and my old stock. 



1 ;im going to try using the bee-hives as iti- 

 riil«itors the coming season. My father used 

 lo I I'll me not to •' count the chickens before 

 liii'.v were hatcht," so I will not say how 

 many I will have. 



We have had nice weather up to yesterday, 

 wIk'U we had a big storm. I can not get along 

 with the American Bee Journal. 



(i. W. KUEAMEH. 



.Audubon Co., Iowa, Feb. 4. 



Queen-Rearing. 



Mr. I'ridgens article on c(iieeu-reuriri;; 

 (liHi:e4lll, I'.iUOi is very interesting and iiu- 

 porlaiit to every bee-lieeper even if not in the 

 iiueeu-rearin;.' business, but unfortunately 1 

 e:in sav with ■■Apis Mellifica" (paire 47(l,i;Nill), 

 lliat 1 luive rea.l it and rereail il .".(I times, pei- 

 liaps, hoping itwoiild clear up, but it is still 

 tirccK to iiie, ■■ Apis Jlcllitica " complains 



S""OATS 

 45caBu. andup. ^^^_* *. M ^1^ 

 The clfanesr. heaviest, best vieldintr oats are 



. ___ . _ eldinp oats . 

 Michigan NortheruCrown. Hammond's EnirlUh Won- 

 der, Czar of Ku»«Hla« Mlchlffan Wonder and Mort- 

 ccaee Lifter, the four best varieties. Rust proof, stiff 

 straw, have yielded 150 bu. per acre^ Cataloff deseribing 





3 and all other farm s 



1 free on request. 



Harry N. Hammond Seed Go.^ 



£-ormerlg ./ FijitiJ. Box 2i Bay City, MIch- 



Please mention Bee Journal when -writine. 



Tight 



i^^E:n 



iK::;z!::si 



H ORSE- HIGH! 



...BULL-STROMG... 



With our DUDlex Automatic 

 Kail BeaiiiiJ^ Woven ^yi^e 

 Fence Machine, any farmer 

 can make 100 Sljles, and from 



SO to 70 rods a day 



20 lo 30c. per rod 



Coiled Spring Wire 



KITSELMAM BROS. 

 Box D'l.Muncie, Ind. 



INLAND POULTBV JOURNAL, Indianapolis, Ind 



ELECTRIC HANDTf WAGONS 



excelin'iuaiilv 8lreD>;tti, durability. Carry 4UU0 lbs, 

 .They art'Lini i»rlced 



[Eleetrle Steel 

 BWheeItt— Biraight 



'or staggered oval 



spokes. Any helffht, 



anywtdth of tlretoSt any wacroii. CataloffDa FREE. 



ELECTRIC WHEEL CO., Box 16. ilulmy. Ills, 



