218 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



April 4, 1901. 



rotation beautifully, and I thought I knew why. I didn't, tho. 

 Page 126. 



THK WISCONSIN BEE-MULCT. 



That proposed legislative mulct of ."5400 for tnoving an 

 apiary is of interest as showing the crudity of some people's 

 ideas of bees. Evidently think the bee-man is getting a fortune 

 too fast, and that he ought to be made to " shell out" some of 

 it. Page 131. 



" AFEARED " OF A HONEY-TRUST. 



And so, 5Ir. Aikin, a convention will wrestle, and 

 wrangle, and suggest, and advise, and demand — and then sug- 

 gest and advise the opposite thing — and then appoint a com- 

 mittee to sell the honey crop of a State — and provide for the 

 greasing of the wheels — not one dollar ! Still Mr. A. has 

 hopes. I, too, have — what would be hopes in a different per- 

 son — I'm " ay^ar^i/ ■' that the honey-trust will some time be 

 an accomplisht fact. Page 132. 



ORTHODOX AND UNORTHODOX GOLDEN BEES. 



According to Mr. Doolittle's interesting history of the 

 five-banders there seems to be in the land both an orthodox 

 and an unorthodox golden bee. Latter a mongrel worthy of 

 all sorts of perdition — but doubtless handy to bear away the 

 sins of both kinds. Still, whether you mongrelize, or whether 

 you eschew mongrelization, this critic for one doesn't believe 

 you can breed golden color to the front without at the same 

 time breeding to the front the ancestral qualities of certain 

 ancestral bees. Wonder which kind it was that a friend of 

 mine presented me. They were beauties, indeed : and they 

 also seemed good-mannered, and exceptionally enterprising ; 

 but they didn't bef^in to get thru the first winter alive. Page 

 134. 



BEE-PARALYSIS AND QUEENS. 



The article of O. O. Poppleton, on page 134, should not 

 be lightly past by, even if it is a sort of insoluble puzzle. 

 It looks a little as if the virus of paralysis has spread invisi- 

 bly pretty much everywhere, but developing to do serious mis- 

 chief only in favorable climates showing mainly in the inferi- 

 ority and short-livedness of queens. And how about the resi- 

 dent Florida bees? Are they free from it (by the extinction 

 of all not free), or are they immune to the virus which they 

 carry as well as the rest ? 



SHELTER AND SHADE FOB BEES. 



That nid-nod, rod-long umbrella of Mr. Wagner's, to shel- 

 ter and shade his bees, it has obvious good points ; and it is 

 moreover somewhat of a novelty, in these last days when nov- 

 elties are scarce. We tip our hats to it just at the angle 

 shown in Fig 2. Possibly some might say that the arrange- 

 ment as a whole has obvious disadvantages also. Page 135. 



UMBRKLL.\S BY MAIL. 



Umbrellas by mail, eh ? If Uncle Sara should adopt the 

 notion would any lost umbrellas, we wonder, imitate the 

 " vilest sinner " and return ? Still viler than the vilest sinner 

 most of 'em, we fear. Possibly, our French and Swiss breth- 

 ren, you have carried postal reform an inch or two too far 

 already ; but what say to an apiary by mail at 15 cents per 

 hive ? Then migratory honey-grabbing might get up-to-date. 

 And the exhaustion of the subject he complains of seems to 

 improve C. P. Dadant, page 135. Would almost like to see 

 what kind of brick he would make when deprived of both 

 straw and clay. 



HOT AND COOL SUGAR-HONEY TALK. 



Prof. Cook's hot words about sugar-honey on page 1-1-9 — 

 possibly it might be well to say some words in addition which 

 are a little cooler. Whether sugar syrup manipulated by bees 

 is " honey " or not, is, to a certain extent a matter of defi- 

 nition of words, and of opinion. Now people may be atro- 

 ciously wrong in their definitions and opinions v/Waoni entirely 

 falling into untruth. World is full of justsuch people ; and let 

 us try to be patient with them. Again, some of those whose 

 — not quite falsehoods — we deplore may never have tasted the 

 real article, stored when bees were in the active condition. 

 Wake the bees up after they have ceast work for the season. 

 and make them carry down in haste some syrup, and occa- 

 sional samples of this kind of work »««;>/ possibly taste more 

 like syrup than they do like honey. But the real article, if I 

 am right, not only has a honey-like taste in a general way, but 

 it has a decided special taste, not at all suggestive of sugar, 

 that would almost deceive the very elect into calling it the 

 flavor of some particular kind of flower. Exactly that hap- 

 pened to Mr. Heddon on a certain rather public occasion. 

 Again (to resume) our senses of smell and taste, rather more 



than the other senses, are often be-trickt, especially if our 

 minds are excited. For instance, I abominate tomatoes. ' 

 Once my mother gave me a piece of very sweet pie. It tasted 

 good. Later on I found out it was made of preserved toma- 

 toes — and then it tasted bad — couldn't eat such stuff to save 

 me, then. It is related that some express clerks somewhere 

 out West buried a box of pumps, that chanced to be shaped 

 like a coffin, because the corpse m&\Ae smelt so bad. It was 

 not falsehood that ailed these clerks, but just the fallibility 

 of the poor human critter. 



\ Questions and Answers. | 



CONDUCTED BY 



DR. O. O. MILLER, Marengo, ni. 



[The Questions may be mailed to the Bee Journal office, or to Dr. Miller 



direct, when he will answer them here. Please do not ask the 



Doctor to send answers by mail. — Editor.1 



Brood Diseases. 



A subscriber sends me a sample of brood that may be 

 affected by foul brood or something- closely allied to it. In 

 matters of so much importance it is wise to take no chances 

 and to waste no time ; so I advise any one who has reason 

 to think that anything' like foul brood, pickled brood, or 

 black brood, is present in any of his colonies, to send a 

 sample with the regular fee of #2.00 to Dr. Wm. R. Howard, 

 Fort Worth, Tex., so that it may be analyzed, and then the 

 sender will know positively what is the trouble, and what is 

 to be done with it. I know of no one in this line more com- 

 petent than Dr. Howard, and bee-keepers owe him a debt of 

 gratitude for his investigations. C. C. MiLLER. 



Transferring and Dividing Colonies. 



1. My bee-book tells how to transfer colonies, but if I 

 do it by the Heddon plan, what is to hinder the parent col- 

 ony from being robbed during^ the 21 days, if near the 

 apiary ? 



2. Why could I not drum them into the new hive at 

 once that has old combs, having it tight around the bottom, 

 not using the forcing-box? 



3. If I make swarms by dividing according to the text- 

 books, will the queenless part rear a queen if there are no 

 queen-cells at the time of dividing? Why wouldn't they 

 be worthless, like many other queenless colonies? 



4. Would colonies made by dividing, be likely to pro- 

 duce as much surplus honey as if left to swarm naturally ? 



Massachusetts. 

 Answers — 1. The supposition is that the bees will 

 defend themselves against robber-bees, but it will be well 

 to help them by contracting the entrance somewhat. 



2. That certainly will be better, if the hives are such 

 as to allow it. 



3. Set it down as a lixt fact that if you want good 

 queens they must be in strong colonies and in favorable 

 circumstances at least till sealed. That settles the ques- 

 tion that the queenless part must not be allowed to rear a 

 queen from the start unless strong and gathering. 



4. Just as much, if of the same strength and having 

 the same advantages. 



Spring Requeening— Introducing Method. 



If you were to requeen an apiary in the spring with 

 young queens from the South, what method of introduc- 

 tion would you practice ? lowA. 



Answer — This matter of queen-introduction is such a 

 constantly changing and elusive thing that it is hard to tell 

 a month ahead what one would do. Just as it happens to 

 look at this minute, I suppose I should take the regulation 

 way of introducing in the cages that brought them. If I 

 didn't follow that exactly, it would be to do something that 

 had before proved successful in my hands, without much 

 reference to what had succeeded with others. Explain it as 

 we may, there's sometiiing about the matter that allows A 

 to be successful in one way and B in another, while both 



