776 



AMEPICAN BEE' JOURNAL 



Dec. S, 1901. 



hosi' attached to hydrants, and the modest white clover duts 

 the green. Porches are shaded with Co]iimbin<- or Maderia 

 vines, which are favorites with bees: there are beds of portu- 

 laca, mignonette and otlier flowers. Tli^* city parks liave 

 much bloom, and sweet clover, both white and yellow, have 

 pre-empted all unoccupied land. A failure of fall honev has 

 never been reported in this locality. 



PBEPARING BEKS FOR WINTER. 



I get everything: ready beforehand. I use new sheets of 

 Indian-head muslin every year : tear it up so large that it will 

 extend over the ed^res of the hive, so that when the cap is shut 

 down upon it. it is utterly impossible for a bee to get up into 

 the cap. I pick oflF all ravellings, iron them smooth, and pile 

 them up on a board. I gather baskets of dry maple leaves. 

 When all was ready, on one of our quiet October days.I uncov- 

 ered the bees, put a Hill's device upon the combs, spread over 

 the sheet, and set on the cap or upper story, poured in a good 

 bed of leaves, and a chaff cushion above them : then the cover 

 with a piece of section between it and tlie cap, thus making a 

 little crack, so that fresh air will circulate above the packing. 

 This was all done so quietly that the bees were not disturbed, 

 and no smoke was necessary. The chaff cushions have been 

 in use a good many years, so I put in leaves, as chaff is not 

 handy to get. 



The hives were all heavy with well-ripened, sealed honev, 

 gatliered from sweet clover, goldenrod, Spanish-needles, bone- 

 set, polygonum, and other wild and cultivated flowers. 



JIL'LBERRIES. 



One year the last of April, I visited the navy yard at Pen- 

 sacola, Fla., and while there gathered a handfiil of ripe white 

 mullierries ; they were very rich, and so juicy and sweet that 

 they made my lingers sticky. A friend, who was a mission- 

 ary many years iii Turkey, says that in that country they 

 press out the juice, boil it down into a syrup, and call it 

 "honey." The residue— skins and seeds — they dry, and keep 

 to feed their donkeys during the winter. 



Peoria Co., III. 



I Questions and Answers, l 



CONDUCTED BY 



DR. O. O. MILLER, afareng-o, Ul, 



[The Qnestions 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 



Feeding Bees for Winter Stores. 



I got caught in that cold spell, and one colony is short of 

 stores ; that is, it has a little over eight pounds of unsealed 

 syrup. 



1. Will that unsealed syrup cause trouble ? 



'J. How can I make sugar candy ? I made some last win- 

 ter, but it was so hard the bees could not take it. I made it 

 according to the books. 



3. How much candy should I give that colony to carry it 

 through the winter ? That is, how many pounds of sugar 

 should I make into candy? 



4. Are four Langstroth frames full of honey enough to 

 winter a strong colony ? 



5. Are forest leaves a good, warm packing? 



Ml.NNESOTA. 



Answers— 1. There is some dangerof it,especially if it was 

 fed late. There will be less danger of trouble in 'the cellar 

 than outdoors. 



2. I doubt being able to tell you any better than the books. 

 Two kinds are given, Scholz or Good candy, which is perhaps 

 the better kind, being a stiff dough made by kneading ex- 

 tracted honey into sugar: and the old kind made by evaporat- 

 ing sugar syrup.' It is quite possible that your candy was all 

 right. No matter what kind of candy you have, the bees in 

 winter are n'ot likely to take it unless it is very easily within 

 reach. See that the candy is directly over the cluster, or else 

 that it is in a frame hung close beside the cluster so as to 

 touch the bees. 



3. Having already 8 lbs. of syrup, 22 lbs. of candy will do 

 for a full colony. 



■i. Yes, if by "full " you mean bulged out from top to 



bottom and sealed out to the lower corners. But as you are- 

 likely to find them in the brood-chamber, six or eight would bft 

 nearer the mark. 



5. Yes, if dry. they are excellent. 



Various Questions. 



1. Will Italian queens reared from a thoroughbred mother 

 mated to a black drone produce as good honey-gatherers as if 

 mated to an Italian drone ? 



2. Does it take more honey to winter a colony of Italians 

 than a colony of blacks ? 



8. Do queens lay during the night ? 



4. Do the worker-bees work in the hive at night, such as 

 build comb, feeding larvse, etc.? 



5. About how m\ich honey does it take to winter a colony 

 of bees in this, latitude ? Our bees usually start to swarming 

 here about the first of April, if the spring is not late. 



South Carolina. 

 Answers — 1. Sometimes they will, and sometimes not. 

 The first cross are generally good, but after that the improve- 

 ment generally goes backward. 



2. You will probably find no difference, if you compare 

 100 colonies of Italians with lOO colonies of blacks of equal 

 strength. You will find considerable variation, however, in 

 single colonies, whether yellow or black. 



3. Yes, indeed. 



4. Yes, indeed. 



5. I don"t know, but I think it is not safe to have a colony 

 go into winter quarters with less than about 30 pounds. unli'ss 

 you expect to feed them in the spring before flowers appear. 

 If I am wrong in this I wish some South Carolinian would cor- 

 rect me ? 



The Afterthought. 



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

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



DB. .STRICKLAND NOT FOR "MELTOSE."" 



I hasten to make amends for a particularly atrocious 

 meanness of my blundering pen. Dr. Strickland was not act- 

 ing as the friend of meltose when he sent a sample to tile office. 

 More care in reading up the whole thing should have shown 

 me that. 1 heedlessly, though sincerely, located him on the 

 wrong side of the fence and went on. Monkey at the lever of 

 a luO H. P. machine is capable of mischief, is he not ? 

 Page Oil. 



THOSE TWIN BRIDES. 



Compliments to those twin brides and their grooms on 

 page 721. Doubtless the boys themselves (on a sliglit inspec- 

 tion) can tell the brides apart. If the rest of the world makes 

 a mistake occasionally, why, that doesn't signify. 



FIXING UP OTHER PEOPLES L.\^NGUAGE. 



And so Dr. Miller wants Prof. Cook and myself to settle 

 matters between us. Might as well ask Kitty and Towser to 

 settle their differences by a little private confab in the back 

 yard ! I just keep getting madder and madder all the time. 

 It's just monstrous the way Prof. Pharaoh Cook is trying to- 

 compel 100,000,000 people to make bricks without straw! All 

 who speak the English tongue come in contact with certain 

 familiar objects. T/iey have to call them something. Not 

 one in a hundred of all these people ca?! tell wliich is worm 

 and which is larva — haven't the entomological knowledge re- 

 quired to do it. But here comes Pharaoh and says, "You 

 must, or I'll take your dirty, ignorant lives !'' Leastwise, if 

 he doesn't put it as badly as that, he is on the road in that 

 direction — "I'll brand you as disgraceful perverters of tlu' 

 Englisli tongue." If it was only one case, and entomology was 

 the only science extant, we might think of yielding just for 

 the sake of peace in the family. But science has a hundred 

 branches (going to be); and nobody is, or possibly can be. 

 familiar with all : but all. I fear, will have Prof. Cooks that 

 will be emboldened to make similar d<'mands of us, if we do 

 not stand for our rights. Suppose a few hundred astronomers 

 should insist that the entire English public leave off saying 

 "shooting stars" and say " bolides." And what a supreme 



