July, 1913. 



229 



American ^ee Journal 



cold milk, two cupfuls of boiling milk 

 and a pinch of salt. Moisten the corn- 

 starch with the cold milk, then add the 

 boiling milk and stir until it boils for 

 eight minutes, then add the salt and the 

 honey. Divide into small wet molds 

 to cool. Turn out, sprinkle a few 

 chopped nuts over the top and serve 

 with cream. — /.•r(fii-s' Home Jourval. 



There Was a Reason 



She drank tlie frafirancc of the rose. 

 That she held closely to her nose. 

 Away she cast it; so would you; 

 She found a bee was drinking, too. 



— Exchattse. 

 •*-•-*• 



Newspaper Plan of Uniting Modified 



The newspaper plan of uniting bees, 

 which originated "in this locality," has 

 come into pretty general use. It is 

 safe and easy. But if the number of 

 bees in each story be so small that one 

 story would contain both lots, it would 

 be a great advantage if there were 

 some plan by which they could be 

 safely united in the one story, thus 

 making them warmer, and saving the 

 trouble of changing into a single story 

 later on. 



It sometimes happens that you have 

 a weak colony in the spring that you 

 wish to strengtlien, or two colonies 

 that you wish to unite, that you can get 

 into one story. Suppose a colony in 

 the spring has only two frames of 



brood. It has a good queen and you 

 want to strengthen it, and would like 

 to give it four frames of brood with 

 adhering bees, making it into a fairly 

 strong colony at once. You may fear 

 such a strong force of strange bees, 

 with so few of her own, might endan- 

 ger the queen's life. 



We have hit upon a plan by which 

 you can give such a weakling as many 

 frames of brood with adhering bees as 

 you can get into one story without en- 

 dangering the queen. Sounds like a 

 fairy story. We have never had 

 a queen hurt by it yet. It is merely a 

 modification of the newspaper plan. 



Go to your colony with only two or 

 three frames of brood, and remove all 

 combs but those containing the brood. 

 Put two or three frames of brood with 

 adhering bees and queen at one side of 

 the hive. Take a good sized sheet of 

 newspaper, cover it over the top, down 

 the side of the frame, and along the 

 bottom of the hive. That shuts the 

 brood, bees and queen of the colony 

 into a compartment by themselves, and 

 leaves a larger compartment entirely 

 separated by the paper. Into this put 

 as many frames of brood with adher- 

 ing bees as you like, or until the hive 

 is full, being careful not to break 

 through the paper. Close up the hive, 

 and the next time you open it, whether 

 it be in two days or two weeks, they 

 will have gnawed the paper away, and 

 become a peaceful and united family. 



E\R Western W) Bee-Keeping 



Conducted by Wesley Foster, Boulder. Colo. 



Have You Noticed It? 



One of our locations has the irri- 

 gated area on one side and dry land 

 on the other. Over the irrigated area 

 the dandelion bloomed very profusely 

 in May. The dry land had an abun- 

 dance of other bloom, but the bees 

 would not touch it while the dande- 

 lions were furnishing nectar. It seemed 

 to take the bees several days to find 

 out that there was nectar to be gather- 

 ed on the other side. At least there 

 was a lull of several days between the 

 time the bees quit securing nectar from 

 the dandelions and the nectar from the 

 dry-land flora began showing in the 



hives. 



^ • »- 



Bee-Keeping Advancing 



Some of us have been experimenting 

 with the vain iiope that some day we 

 might see the development of a bee 

 that can carry a thimbleful of honey at 

 a load, or perhaps a flower that will 

 well-nigh drown the bees in the abun- 

 dant nectar secreted. But the pros- 

 perity of the industry does not wait for 

 this hope to be realized. The improve- 

 ment of the tools of the bee-keeper 

 seems to indicate the growth of the in- 

 dustry; the steam-heated uncapping 

 knife, the capping melter, and improved 

 extractors. .'Xnd now it seems quite 



probable that Mr. Ferguson will soon 

 be able to furnish us with a practical 

 uncapping machine. 



The automobile is going to make 

 possible the operation of fully twice 

 the number of out-apiaries for the 

 alert bee-keeper. I believe that within 

 a few years it will prove as valuable for 

 the bee-keeper's use as the honey ex- 

 tractor. Once the bee-keeper with 200 



colonies or more tries a machine he 

 will no longer do without. 



Another factor is the improvement in 

 our distributive system. The Ameri- 

 can people have awakened to the fact 

 that expensive distribution is one of 

 the causes of the high cost of living, 

 and means are being found, and will be 

 developed, for delivering produce to 

 the consumer at a very small percent- 

 age of the value. 



One of the main desiderata of speci- 

 alization in the West is for the bee- 

 keepers to co-operate in buying sup- 

 plies and in selling honey. The bee- 

 keeper who spends half his year in 

 disposing of his crop cannot succeed 

 as well as the one who sells his crop in 

 a lump. I believe this is one of the 

 reasons why the western States have 

 more specialists than some of the east- 

 ern and central States. 



Side-Lights on the Alexander Plan of 

 Increase 



We have made somewhere over 100 

 colonies increase during May by the 

 Alexander plan. It has not been an 

 entire success, but the failures, where 

 there have been failures, have been 

 caused by seasonal conditions. We 

 have been trying to rear our own 

 queens, and the weather has been so 

 cool, especially the nights, that we 

 have not been able to get many. We 

 have had several cases where the 

 queen, of this year's rearing, went back 

 and forth through the excluder, but 

 not enough bees went above with her 

 so that she could do as well at egg 

 laying as the queens which were placed 

 below the excluder with the brood 

 above. 



Only a small proportion of the colo- 

 nies, where the brood was above, built 

 cells, so that some of those had to be 

 given young larvie a week or ten days 

 after the brood had been placed above 

 the excluder. With a few that did not 

 build queen-cells, and we had no cells 

 to give them, we set off the e.xcluder 

 and gave a comb of young larvs. In- 

 stead of placing these set off hives en- 

 tirely on a new stand, we removed the 

 lower hive a half width over and set 

 the top hive on a bottom-board beside 



The Bees Busy Themselves on the Hawthorne, Thimbleberry and Chokb Cherry 



OF THE Foothills. 



