41st YEAR. 



CHICAGO, ILL,, JUNE 20, 1901, 



No, 25, 



^ ^ Editorial. ^ \ 



The Season seems to be unusually un- 

 favorable. Cold and dry weather has pre- 

 vailed over a large area, while some portions 

 complain that it has been too wet. There is 

 some complaint that white clover is plentiful, 

 but that the bees get little or nothing from it. 

 Unless very close watch is kept, there is dan- 

 ger that some colonies will be starving in 

 June. 



Starting Bees in Sections. — Mrs. Bar- 

 ber and others are warm in praise of the plan 

 of giving bees an extracting-super to start 

 them to work, and a day or two later repla- 

 cing the extracting-super with a super of sec- 

 tions. Referring to this, M. A. Gill says in 

 Gleanings in Bee-Culture : 



In advising the use of an extracting-super 

 to start to work in sections, are you not 

 aware that thousands of us bee-keepers do 

 not have an extracting-super on the place? 

 I would advise any bee-keeper working for 

 comb honey to exchange supers with colonics' 

 that are tardy about working in sections with 

 one that has made a (food start, and be sure to 

 carry along some of the comb-builders (young 

 bees) which are the last to leave the super. 

 The colony given the super with full sheets 

 of foundation will at once resume work, from 

 the force of the same habit you say they have 

 acquired by the use of your extracting-super. 



A Satisfactory Hive-Cover — at least 

 one that is satisfactory in all climates — is 

 hardly yet on the market. Editor Root says 

 that the perfect hive-cover is yet to be made 

 for Colorado, Cuba, and other countries that 

 are different from the northern part of the 

 United States. He hardly need to have made 

 any distinction, for objections against a cover 

 in Colorado would still lie against it in New 

 York, only in less degree. Possibly one 

 trouble in the case has been that there has 

 been too strong a feeling that the expense of 

 a cover mus,t not much exceed the cost of a 

 )ilain board. Something must not be expected 

 for nothing, and a good cover being so essen- 

 tial a part of a hive, the wise bee-keeper will 

 hardly object to some extra expense Per- 

 haps it would lie a good idea to have a pretty 

 thorough discussion as to the points of a 

 good hive-cfjver. Some of them may be as 

 follows : 



Lightness : a cover must be lifted a good 

 many times, and it makes a big difference 

 whether it weighs five pounds or twenty-five. 



A freedom from warping and twisting: a 

 plain board cover may be firmly clcated at the 



ends that it can not possibly warp, but the 

 cleats can not in the slightest degree prevent 

 it from twisting so it will not lie flat on the 

 hive. 



A dead-air space: this will make it cooler 

 for sunuuer aud warmer for winter. To be 

 sure, a shade-board can be put over in sum- 

 mer, and something of the same kind may be 

 effective for winter, but it is more convenient 

 and satisfactory if cover and shade-board can 

 be all in one. 



A hive-cover with these requisites would 

 make a perfectly close fit, and, if made per- 

 fectly rain-proof, ought to give pretty good 

 satisfaction. In spite of the expense, some 

 have covers covered with tin, so as to make a 

 sure thing against leakage. Lately Neponset 

 roofing-paper is mentioned as a close competi- 

 tor of tin. Gleanings in Bee-Culture reports 

 it still doing good service after 13 years' use. 

 Of course, it must be painted ; but so must 

 tin. 



Improvement of Stock is in the air 



nowadays. Unfortunately it is " in the air '' 

 in too literal a sense. There is a general 

 reaching out after it, and a feeling that some- 

 where in the air about us there is something 

 like improvement if we only knew enough to 

 get hold of it. We are just now getting alorg 

 so far in the matter as to begin to realize that 

 we know nothing about it. The editor of the 

 Rocky Mountain Bee Journal says : 



" Who among us will deny that darkness, 

 black as Egyptian night, envelops the whole 

 bee-keeping world on this subject ? This in- 

 cludes iiueen-breeders, bee-journal editors, 

 and all others." 



Well, it is a hopeful sign when one begins 

 to feel his ignorance, and the reaching out 

 after light gives promise of good things to 

 come. If control of mating becomes an 

 established fact, why should there not be just 

 as intelligent work done in breeding bees as in 

 breeding any other class of stock ? Even 

 without control of mating, if enough interest 

 can be aroused to get all the bee-keepers to 

 breed only from the best, there will be a 

 great gain. 



Sections Filled with Foundation 



have an argument in their favor sometimes 

 not thought of. If you are wise, you will 

 probably have in the brood-chamber much 

 less drone-comb than the bees desire. It is 

 the natural thing for them to fill out largely 

 with drone-comb for storing, and the two 

 kinds of comb do not look so well in a sec- 

 tion. You probably have thought of that, 

 but that is not all. The bees desire drone- 

 brood, and if yuu keep careful watch you 

 will find that sometimes as much as halt or 

 quarter of the section has not a drop of 



honey in it when sealing is well along in the 

 super, because the bees are holding these cells 

 open for the queen to lay in. If the .section 

 is filled with worker foundation, then there is 

 no chance for drone-comb there. Those who 

 use full sheets of foundation in sections do 

 not find it necessary to use excluders to keep 

 the queen down. 



Size of Entrance. — Editor Doolittle says 

 in the Progressive Bee-Keeper that he regu- 

 lates the entrance to suit the size of the col- 

 ony. After the first fiight in the spring he 

 allows to the strongest colonies an entrance 

 of 2x-'g inches, and from there down to ,^ax^ 

 for the weakest, leaving them thus during 

 early spring. When the bees begin to work 

 on early pusturage, the entrances are enlarged 

 as needed to allow free passage. 



Box-Hives and Skeps in other coun- 

 tries seem to be more common than in this. A 

 writer in the British Bee Journal says: "I 

 can get as many driven bees as I like for the 

 trouble of 'driving."' The writer says he 

 makes his hives out of used boxes, and he 

 has taken the first prize for the best hive 

 made by an amateur. Most bee-keepers on 

 this side would hardly feel they could afford 

 to make their own hives from common boxes. 



Yellow Sweet Clover. — Successive 

 crops of this clover from one sowing are re- 

 ported in Gleanings in Bee-Culture by M. M. 

 Baldridge. December 2, 1897. seeds were put 

 in a shallow trench and covered with one or 

 two inches af soil. From this sowing came 

 three distinct crops, the last in 1899, which , 

 must all have come from the same sowing. 

 He says it sometimes winter-kills, and, like 

 the white variety, it is a biennial. 



Getting Light Extracted Honey. — 



Mrs. Harrison tells in Gleanings in Bee-Cul- 

 ture about some extracted that she put on 

 exhibition in competition with a number of 

 other samples, and upon which she obtained 

 a premium. Hers was distinctly whiter than 

 the others, which did not at all differ from 

 each other. Her competitors thought there 

 must have been some trick about it, and she 

 told them the trick. She extracted from none 

 but pure-white combs. Holding the comb 

 up to the light, if she saw a few cells of dark 

 honey, those few cells were not uncapped. 

 All utensils were clean and free from other 

 honey. That was her "trick'' for getting 

 the whitest honey. This trick is a familiar 

 one across the water, but bee-keepers on this 

 side are hardly equal to their foreign cousins 

 in getting up extracted honey for exhibition. 



