.Iiilv. 1913. 



American Hee Joqrnal j 



take 4 or more. The more you taka 

 the better the bees will stay. With so 

 many you hardly need to fasten them 

 in. Then in 3 days return all but 2 

 combs to their old home. You may re- 

 turn the adhering bees with these 

 combs, but it will be better if you brush 

 back into the nucleus the bees from 

 one of them. 



If the making of nuclei is for the 

 purpose of increasing the number of 

 your colonies, and this is sure to be 

 the case if you are not a queen-breeder, 

 then you might as well make them 

 strong early. Just as soon as the 

 queen begins to lay, if there is any 

 honey in the lield, you can make a 

 good colony with a nucleus, by placing 

 it on the stand of some fair-sized col- 

 ony, which has a sufficient supply of 

 stores, but is not working in the su- 

 pers, and place the latter on a new spot. 

 If you were to do this with a colony 

 that is filling its supers, you would put 

 an end to its surplus crop. 



In this way, colonies which are not 

 yielding either swarms or super honey 

 may be compelled to help build up the 

 apiary, without perceptible loss, and 

 „ou avoid breeding from them. 



fore an assemblage of people who were 

 instrumental in having it built. It 

 creates 200,000 horse-power and an 

 artificial lake, now baptised with the 

 name of the chief engineer who con- 

 ceived this herculean task. Cooper. 

 Lake Cooper is about .50 miles long, in 

 some places 4 miles wide, and some 40 

 feet deep at the deepest spot. 



The small cut shown herewith illus- 

 trates one of the twin doors of the 

 lower end of the lock, which has a lift 

 of several feet more than any of the 

 giant Panama locks. The door weighs 

 ()00,000 pounds. The little man in light 

 overcoat standing before it, is the 

 genius of the work, the Napoleon of 

 industry for whom no task is too great. 

 H. L. Cooper. 



Artificial Comb-Honey Canartl 



Gleanings in Bee Culture, in its May 

 1 number, mentions a syndicated arti- 

 cle, by Miss Ida M. Tarbell, repeating 

 the old story of manufactured comb 

 honey tilled 7uilh corn syrup. This is 

 yet a remnant of the "scientific pleas- 

 antry" of Dr. Wiley. It has done un- 

 told harm to the bee-keeping interests, 

 and the writer has often met people 



One ok the Bk; Lotk Gates- 



The Largest Electric Plant in the 

 World 



The Mississippi River Power Dam, 

 shown on our cover page, located just 

 opposite the Editor's home, is the 

 largest of its kind in the world. We 

 gave a view of it 14 months ago, while 

 it was building. It is now completed, 

 the last tubful of concrete having been 

 poured on May 31, 1913, at noon, be- 



who had read this and believed it until 

 he explained the facts. However, Dr. 

 Wiley has done so much good by his 

 faithful work against real fraud that we 

 cannot hold a grudge for this thought- 

 less statement, made some 30 years ago 

 as a joke. Old chestnuts keep reap- 

 pearing, the more is the pity. 



The original canard appeared in the 

 'Popular Science Monthly" in June. 



1881. Although both the American 

 Bee Journal and Gleanings have fre- 

 quently offered large sums of money 

 for proofs of the assertion made then, 

 that comb was manufactured commer- 

 cially and filled with glucose, people 

 who have no regard for truth have 

 continued to repeat the story. 



Will Miss Tarbell take notice ? 

 There never has been such a thing as 

 manufactured comb filled with syrup 

 or anything else. 



A Sudden Plow Its Kesults— Cost 

 or Wax 



The article from G. M. Doolittle, on 

 page 199, is worthy of a recall to the 

 attention of the reading bee-keepers. 

 Mr. Doolittle explains that, in a sudden 

 heavy flow, the bees often find them- 

 selves short of room and are induced 

 to swarm, although with plenty of 

 empty space. Comb building does not 

 begin until the first heavy flow has 

 been digested by the young bees, who 

 are at that time the comb builders. 

 Hence, the advisability of having sec- 

 tions of built comb to store the first 

 sudden flow. 



The worker, as it comes from the 

 field, finding no room for the contents 

 of its honey-sac, must remain loaded, 

 and therefore digest or begin the pro- 

 cess of wax production, at the expense 

 of the crop which is wasting in the 

 fields. We called the attention of the 

 bee-keeping public to this in our 

 pamphlet on extracted honey, pub- 

 lished in the '80's. We do not believe 

 that there is any doubt at present, in 

 the minds of the experienced apiarist, 

 that bees produce wax at will, at any 

 time when it is needed, but that they 

 are compelled to produce wax, by a 

 natural process of digestion, whenever 

 there is a flow which supplies them 

 with all the honey they can carry, and 

 they find no room to store it. 



More or less credence is given, in 

 some of the European journals, to the 

 assertion that wax costs ne.xt to noth- 

 ing to the bees, and that it is proven 

 by the fact that a newly-harvested 

 swarm builds such a large quantity of 

 comb shortly after being hived. The 

 people who write this are overlooking 

 the fact that the bees of a swarm are 

 in most cases in the process of wax 

 producing. Many of them have already 

 consumed a large quantity of honey, 

 which has undergone the transforma- 

 tion, so that the weight of a swarm is 

 not a criterion of the quautityof honey 

 necessary to produce the wax. If we 

 could separate all the wax scales 

 already about to emerge from their ab- 

 dominal rings, we would be able to 



