568 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Sept. 5, 1901. 



there you are. with the cold chills running down your back 

 at the thought of a big- lot of honey on the hives and none 

 of it in marketable condition. If, however, the flow will be 

 accommodating enough to continue till all are finished, 

 there may be a decided gain in having on so many sections, 

 for the bees will have more room to work, and will do the 

 better for it. But never get on so many at a time that all 

 will not be crowded with bees. On the other hand, there is 

 a loss when in a full harvest there are bees enough to crowd 

 two or three supers and only one is on. 



Toward the close of the harvest, or at any time when it 

 is doubtful about much more being done, it is often difficult 

 to tell whether another super should be given or not. At 

 such times it is better to put the empty super on top, for 

 the bees will not crowd up into it unless they really need it. 



A Glucose Question. 



Among other ideas I have had this one : that one reason 

 why bee-keepers opposed the use of glucose is that it is un- 

 wholesome, if not injurious, as an article of food. 



Dr._ Howard Miller, editor of The Inglenook, says in the 

 June 15th issue of his magazine, in answer to the question, 

 " Is glucose unhealthy ?" asked by one of his readers: 



" No. The only thing about it is, it is not as sweet as 

 the sugar it usually takes the place of." 



Now, as the editor of The Inglenook is pre-eminently a 

 scholar, and you are in addition a practical bee-keeper, and 

 have reason to be thoroughly acquainted with all the prop- 

 erties of glucose, I would like very much to know how you 

 consider it. ' Missouri. 



Answer. — Chemically pure glucose is one thing, and 

 the commercial article quite another. However correct the 

 scholarly editor may be in thinking that chemically pure 

 glucose is a wholesome article of diet, if he should get a 

 swallow of some samples of the commercial article, he 

 would be likely, after vainly trying to get the taste out of 

 his mouth, to decide that it was neither tit for man nor bee. 



An Amateur's Bunch of Questions. 



1. When the honey-flow is plentiful, why do some 

 apiarists place a second super between the brood-chamber 

 and a filled super ? 



2. I have my colonies on trestles, made of 2x3 stuff 

 nailed together in stretcher form, with legs nailed so the 

 hives are about 12 inches from the ground, placeing three 

 colonies in a group. What objection is there to this olan ? 

 Why? *^ 



3. I use a common white table-cloth with smooth 

 or glazed surface on top of sections as a sort of cover or 

 blanket. Is it a good or bad thing to do ? What objections 

 can be offered to such use ? Why ? 



4. Does the queen ever leave the hive except at swarm- 

 ing-time ? 



5. When (at what age) does the virgin queen leave the 

 hive, and how long from the time she mates does she pro- 

 duce eggs ? 



6. Why do we find more drones in some colonies than 

 in others, although apparently about equal in numbers ? 



7. Is it possible that a colonj' will carry over one or 

 more drones during winter ? 



8. If two colonies with brood-chambers well filled with 

 honey, and supers containing sections with starters, were 

 given SO pounds of extracted honey, how much would be 

 stored in the sections ? 



9. How can honey be made more liquid, or thinner, or 

 gravity lessened ? 



10. What is honey-dew ? Indiana. 



Answers. — 1. To give room for the bees to store more 

 honey, of course. Perhaps you mean to ask why they put 

 the empty super under the one partly filled instead of put- 

 ting it over. Because the bees will begin work in it sooner 

 if the empty super is under instead of over ; and because 

 the sections in the filled super ma3' be capped a little whiter 

 when raised up. Perhaps, however, you mean to ask why 

 the empty super is put on at all before the other is finished 

 and taken off". Because after the sections are all filled the 

 bees take some time to finish up the sealing at the outer 

 parts, and it would be a waste of time to wait till the first 

 super can be taken oft. 



2. In the height of the honey-flow the bees often fall to 

 the ground in front of the hive as they come from the fields 

 heavily laden, and they must rest quite a little time before 



they can rise and fly to the entrance. With the hive on a 

 stand near the ground they can crawl in at once without 

 waiting to fly in. 



3. I formerly used enameled cloth over the sections, and 

 the bees not only put propolis in the angle where the oil- 

 cloth rested on the sections, but crowaed it under the oil- 

 cloth and on the section^. I find tlie sections less daubed 

 since there is nothing over them but the board cover with a 

 bee-space between. 



4. No, not after she begins laying. 



5. She makes her bridal trip when about five to eight 

 days old, and begins laying about three days later. 



6. In some hives there is little or no drone-comb, so of 

 course few or no drones will be reared, while in other hives 

 a large amount of drone-comb gives opportunity for many 

 drones. A colony with a young queen is not likely to have 

 as many drones as one with an old queen. 



7. Yes. 



8. I don't know. Some say they can get ;?+ of it in sec- 

 tions, others say not more than %. 



9. Add water to it. 



10. The secretion of plant or scale lice, and also, ac- 

 cording to some authorities, an extra-nectarine secretion of 

 plants without the presence of plant or scale lice. 



^ The Afterthought. * 



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

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



SUPERSEDING QUEENS BY RULE. 



Procrustes kept a nice lodging-house — leastwise he had an 

 iron bed with chopping-off arrangement and power stretchers 

 attached. Every lodger had to be made to fit the bed, no mat- 

 ter at what cost of blood and groans. Distant cousins of 

 Procrustes are those brethren who supersede every queen at 

 the same exact and early date of her life. She may be good 

 for a month yet, or may be good for three years yet — all'ee 

 same chop goes the Procrustean bed. Who knows but what 

 the longest tongued bees in the country have their line termi- 

 nated by that chop? Jlr. Doolittle's way of giving a pro- 

 tected ceil, and letting the bees decide whether they want the 

 young queen or the old one, seems to be much the wiser way. 

 Bees show more practical sagacity in such matters than to 

 most of us seems possible. Page 467. 



PEAR-BLIGHT AND THE BEES. 



It is evidently quite a "peck of half bushels "our cause 

 is getting into in California about the pear-blight. If the 

 fruit-men not only have assurance that the saint might have 

 stolen the horse, but star testimony that the horse won't let 

 sinners ride him under any circumstances, why then the case 

 begins to look a little dark for the saint F.rnest Root is evi- 

 dently sound, that there must be more evidence than one 

 scientist as to the impossibility of blight traveling on the 

 wind. The fact that extensive young orchards which have 

 never bloomed yet are as badly infected as any is a tower of 

 strength to us which we should make the most of. I'll ven- 

 ture the guess that the smallest size of bark-louse-eating 

 birds do most of the infection — getting the infected viscus on 

 their feet, and leaving some wherever they go in search of 

 little insects. Prof. Cook's opinion, expressed on page 516, 

 is important. He feels sure that there will be plenty of means 

 whereby infection will be carried, even after the removal of 

 the bees — and witliout calling on the wind, either. Leastwise 

 let us not "get off the earth" with any needless haste. Pos- 

 sibly a little silent inertia will do us good — let the other fel- 

 low do nine-tenths of the talking, and most of the acting. 

 Perchance most of this is merely a cloud, and it is the ten- 

 dency of clouds to roll by. Page 468. 



QUEEN SUPERSESSIONS AND LINDEN BLOOM. 



Three-quarters of all supersessions within three weeks of 

 the close of the linden. I wonder how widely that is true in 

 other yards than Mr. Doolittle's. Perhaps where there is no 

 linden the last strong flow of the season would be its equiva- 

 lent. In my yard I "kind o' thinlc " that more than the 

 remaining one-quarter occur in swarming-time just before the 

 linden. I may be quite wrong — only go by my guess as to 

 how many prime swarms have virgin qneens. . I suppose the 

 general principle is that when bees are rearing little brood. 



