520 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Aug. 15, 1901. 



of your colonies will be of mixed blood. Rear from pure 

 stock each year, and eventually you may work out the black 

 blood. 



2. As in the previous ansvrer, your most hopeful plan is 

 to breed your queens from pure stock, and when you run 

 out of pure stock get a pure queen. A careful study of 

 your text-book may be of some help. 



3. Hard to tell. Possibly they are not getting- enough 

 honey. 



4. Right in the heat of the day, when the bees are busy 

 at work. If there is danger of robbing, however, it may be 

 better to take away the honey in the after part of the day, 

 so that darkness may cover any tendency to robbing. 



6. It is difficult to advise just what is the best way for 

 you. If you will carefully study your text-book you will 

 probably be better able to judge for yourself. One way is 

 to take all but one frame from the hive and put them in a 

 new hive on a new stand. Leave the queen on the old 

 stand. Let all the adhering bees be taken with about half 

 the frames, and shake off into the old hive the bees from 

 the other half. It is not too late to transfer. 



6. Catch her by the wings or by the thorax (what, per- 

 haps, you would call the shoulder)— never by the back part 

 or abdomen. 



T. Probably five colonies are as many as would be wise 

 for you to have till you gain some experience. An experi- 

 enced bee-keeper may care for 100 colonies or more. 



8. Very often more is expected than realized. There is 

 no definite amount. It may run from nothing to 200 

 pounds or more. If you average 50 pounds you need not 

 complain. 



^~*-*^ 



Importance of Pure Drones. 



Is it not a fact that our bees ought to have three dis- 

 tinct bands to show their purity ? If so, I want to know 

 why our drones from the same mother are not purely 

 marked ? While bees and queens are purely marked our 

 drones are not. What I mean by that is this : We have 

 some drones that are black, and some of these are yellow- 

 banded, which I believe shows impurity. If this is not 

 impurity, I do not know what you call it. In breeding bees 

 I do think the drones are the ones we ought to be particular 

 about. I think if we can get our bees, queens and drones 

 all with the same marking, we will have better bees and 

 more honey, as my experience of about 20 years with bees 

 has shown. Texas. 



Answek.— You are right in thinking that there should 

 be uniform markings in the drones of pure stock, and also 

 that it is just as important to have good drones as good 

 queens to breed from. One reason, and perhaps the only 

 reason, that so little attention is paid to the drones, is the 

 difficulty of controlling the mating. But that is not a suffi- 

 cient excuse for neglecting what can be done in the way of 

 suppressing poor drones and encouraging good ones. 



Replacing a Drone-Layer. 



I had a colony of bees in my apiary with crooked 

 combs, and I cut them out and straightened them. The 

 bees had swarmed some time before. I found that the 

 capped brood was raised, and also some of the cells had 

 two and three eggs, and some had none, so I looked up the 

 queen and stuck a pin through her, and then gave them 

 some brood from another hive for rearing a queen. Was it 

 right to give them the brood at that time, or should I have 

 waited some time and then cut out queen-cells, and then 

 give them fresh brood ? Idaho. 



Answer.— It is not likely that you would have gained 

 anything by delay, but would have lost. It would have 

 been just so much loss of time, the colony meanwhile 

 becoming weaker, the bees older and less fitted for rearing 

 a young queen. 



Brood-Chamber Crowded With Honey, Etc. 



1. I have a colony of bees whose queen was old, and 

 let them store honey in the brood-nest. I have requeened, 

 but the new queen has little or no place to lay in. How can 

 I make the bees remove the honey from the brood-nest ? 



2. Has not the Danzenbaker reversible frame this 

 advantage, that as the bees will not allow honey at the bot- 

 tom of the frame, when you reverse it you force them to 

 store it in the supers ? 



3. Can you tell me if we have a fall flow in Minnesota ? 

 There are no buckwheat fields near. 



4. My bees worked on lilacs this spring. It this usual ? 



Minnesota. 



Answers. — 1. You can hasten the matter by uncapping 

 the honey where you want the queen to lay. All the better 

 if you do not make a very smooth job of it. One way is to 

 take a saw, or a piece of a saw-blade, and scrape the surface. 



2. At one time much was made of this feature of the 

 Danzy and other reversible frames. I don't know whether 

 it is now much valued. 



3. I think in most parts of Minnesota there is more or 

 less of a fall flow. 



4. I think it is not unusual for bees to work on lilacs, 

 but the number of lilac bushes is never large enough to ' 

 make the plant an important honey-plant. 



The Afterthought. 



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

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



GARDENS FOR THE CHILDREN. 



Anent page 409, where Prof. Cook talks of a garden for 

 each child, there are two children at the home in which I live. 

 They were fond of planting things, but seemed to manifest 

 almost idiocy as to the details of the matter. Surely, I 

 thought, it would be no use to give them gardens. Well, this 

 summer their father took it into his head to do just that. 

 And he didn't give them little and worthless bits, either, but 

 large plots of very fertile gi-ouud. The result is that with a 

 very moderate amount of advice and assistance they are hav- 

 ing some success. Their crop will not total much in money ; 

 but when we come to consider things worth more than money, 

 no equal area of the farm will produce so much. Had the 

 plots been smaller, so as not to oversize the amount of hoeing 

 they enjoy doing, it would have been a little better. 



A HOUSE-CELLAR FOR BEES. 



Some have doubted whether a house-cellar, with footsteps 

 and children's play immediately over the bees, could be any- 

 thing else than a very poor place to winter bees in. As a, 

 counterblast to this it is interesting to see that the Gleanings 

 cellar, with machinery overhead, proved a first-rate place. 

 The fact seems to be that bees will get used to almost ' 

 anything if it is only experienced hourly or very frequently ; 

 but when noise or jar occur irregularly, and not much oftener 

 than once a week, then they are disturbed and injured. Page 

 413. 



OUEEN FERTILIZING EGGS. 



F. Greiner may be right, page 420, that the queen fertil- 

 lizes eggs, or omits to do so, entirely without volition. Some- 

 thing other than space, or curvature of the iiueen's body, may 

 deftly produce effects. I opine, however, that a " straw 

 vote '■ would show him badly in the minority. 



".TOUNCIKG " EXTRACTING-SUI'EKS. 



I don't want to make sport of any manipulation which a 

 practical brother finds to succeed even tolerably well. If I 

 did I might try to be funny over Mr. Davenport's method of 

 jouncing out the bees of an extracting-super. I'll be respect- 

 ful ; but I'll wait till a lot more of the brothers find it a suc- 

 cess before I jounce. Page 420. 



SWARMS GOING BACK. 



Tell Dr. Miller, page 425, that among Ohio bees more 

 than two swarms go back to the old hive after hiving, for each 

 98 that go to the woods. Of unmixed swarms, with laying 

 ([ueens, and the queen all right, perhaps his proportion would 

 answer. Swarming and going back into the old hive again 

 has been abnormally in fashion the present year — ?oing back 

 before clustering, and going back after clustering, and going 

 back during attempt to hive, and going back after hiving — all 

 sorts of going back. When bees from different hives get 

 mixed in swarming (a very common tiling in a large apiary 

 with swarm-fever raging) the queen or queens will often be 

 balled — at least half the time if the bees are light of honey — 

 which is also a common thing, at least in this yard. The lit- 

 tle ball of bees and queen often falls from the cluster to the 



