January, 



American ISea Journal 



light be allowed in the cellar the bees 

 will leave the hive, and a bee that leaves 

 the hive in a cellar is generally a dead 

 bee. But is it true that light will always 

 make a bee desert a hive? Recall what 

 may have been observed any fall. Sup- 

 pose the temperature was 50 degrees 

 Nov. I, and that the bees outdoors had 

 a good time flying, and then suppose the 

 next day the thermometer never goes 

 higher than it would be in the cellar, 

 say 45 degrees. Never a bee leaves the 

 hive. Doesn't need to ; doesn't want to. 

 And yet the bee-keeper who may have 

 observed this a dozen of times, if his 

 bees are in the cellar, and at the same 

 temperature, on that second day of No- 

 vember, will feel it an absolute neces- 

 sity that the cellar be absolutely dark. 



It can not be denied that when bees 

 have been confined for a considerable 

 time in the cellar, and feel the need of 

 a cleansing flight, the admission of light 

 will cause many to leave the hive when 

 darkness would oblige them to remain. 

 But in the early part of winter, when 

 there comes a warm spell, making it 

 troublesome to keep the cellar properly 

 ventilated, some who insist on keeping 

 the cellar closed for fear of the ad- 

 mission of light, might be surprised to 

 find how quiet the bees will remain with 

 a door or window open, provided that 

 the air in the cellar be all right, and 

 that opening of door or window may 

 be just the thing needed to make and 

 keep the air all right. 



Let each one experiment for himself, 

 and not be too prompt to condemn the 

 bees to darkness. If a warm spell comes, 

 and the cellar needs cooling off, open 

 doors and windows as soon as it grows 

 dark in the evening, and do not darken 

 up next day till the bees show they are 

 disturbed by the light. 



This matter is of special importance 

 to those who have furnaces in cellars. 

 One man with a furnace in his cellar 

 says he does not find it necessary to 

 darken his cellar for days after the bees 

 are carried in, so long as the tempera- 

 ture does not go below 40. With doors 

 and windows wide open the bees are 

 much the same as on the summer stands, 

 only enjoying milder weather. If asked 

 whether bees do not fly out, he replied, 

 "Sure. But don't they fly out of the 

 hive in the dark? And how do you 

 know that in the dark, with air less pure, 

 two bees would not come out of the hive 

 and drop on the floor for every one 

 that flies out m the light with its pure 

 air?" 



How Soon do Bees Discover Queen- 

 lessiiess? 



C. P. Dadant says, page 716, that he 

 has often noticed bees showing signs of 

 queenlessness within an hour after re- 

 moval of the queen, though it sometimes 

 takes less. Commenting on this, Glean- 

 ings says, page 16, "It is our opinion 

 that it will seldom take longer than an 

 hour, if it does that much, for bees to 

 discover their qucenlcss condition." This 

 matter has a bearinjj upon the starting 

 of queen-cells, and if tlicse authorities 

 be correct the time that it takes bees to 

 discover their queenlessness is less than 

 some have supposed. It would be well 

 if exact observations coifld be made af- 

 ter very quietly removing the queen. 



Exhibiting Granulated Honey 



Dr. F. D. Clum, of New York State, 

 wrote us as follows recently about ex- 

 hibiting extracted honey : 



Editor American Bee Journal — 



I attended the 19th annual exhibi- 

 tion of the Poultry, Pigeon and Pet 

 Stock Association, held in New York 

 City this week, and while there I noticed 

 a fine display of Hve bees, and honey, 

 both in the comb and extracted. All 

 of the latter was a clear, thin liquid, 

 just the condition it would be in the 

 day extracted. Honey exhibited in this 

 way to the general public at this time 

 of the year is greatly misleading, and 

 hurts the sale of pure extracted honey. 

 The public, after seeing this labeled 

 "pure extracted honey," naturally expect 

 to receive honey exactly like it when 

 (hey try to buy it, and think something 

 is wrong, or the honey impure, if they 

 receive granulated extracted honey. 



Why not exhibit extracted honey in 

 both liquid and solid state, properly la- 

 beled, when exhibiting it to the general 

 public? It would save the seller of 

 honey a lot of trouble explaining, and 

 prevent unjust suspicion arising in the 

 mind of the consumer. 



F. D. Clum, M. D. 



Dr. Clum is certainly right in the 

 above. The sooner the general public 

 become familiar with granulated honey-, 

 the better it will be for producers of 

 extracted honey. The common idea 

 that such honey must always be liquid 

 is all wrong. This would have been a 

 fine field for the late Honey- Producers' 

 League to operate in. The extracted- 

 honey producers could well afford to 

 spend a little to acquaint (he consum- 

 ing public with the fact that liquid honey 

 will granulate; and also that it is very 

 easily reliquefied. 



We hope that, hereafter, granulated 

 honey will be shown in every honey ex- 

 hibit. The Illinois State Fair honey 

 display always has a large amount of 

 granulated extracted honey. It is a good 

 thing. 



^ 



The Plural-Queen Question 



The author of this system, E.W. Ale.x- 

 ander, comes out in Gleanings, and very 

 frankly says that although he has had 

 a plurality of queens living harmoniously 

 together from the first of May until 

 about October 20, yet on examination 

 Nov. 5 he finds only one queen left in 

 each hive. This will be a great disap- 

 pointment to those who had counted on 

 thus keeping extra queens through the 

 winter. It leaves little value in the sys- 

 tem, unless it prove on fuller trial that 

 2 or more queens in one hive prevents 

 swarming. How that will turn out re- 

 mains to be seen. 



Dual Virgin Queen Plan 



One by one the prospects for success 

 of new schemes seem to get a dash of 

 cold water upon them. This time it is 

 the plan of having 2 virgins in a fertil- 

 izing hive at the same time, one caged 

 and one free, the caged virgin to be 

 liberated when the free one is laying 

 and removed. Editor Root says in 

 Gleanings: "In order to make this dual 



plan of introdiicing a success, the sec- 

 ond queen should not be caged more 

 than two days prior to the removal of 

 the first one." 



He says more than this is too long a 

 confinement for No. 2, although he does 

 not say what harm results from such 

 confinement. If only 2 days' confinement 

 can be allowed, the plan loses nearly 

 all of its value. One must know 2 

 days in advance when a young queen 

 is ready to be taken as a laying queen, 

 and it is not an easy thing to do this 

 so long as that time varies no little. 

 Besides, it will not be an easy thing 

 to plan always to have queens emerg- 

 ing from their cells just at the right 

 time. To be sure, one may plan in ad- 

 vance to have virgins emerge from their 

 cells within a short time of any given 

 date, but that planning must be quite 

 a number of days in advance of the 

 emerging, and how is one to tell so 

 far in advance just when they will be 

 needed? Let us hope that it may yet 

 be proven that virgins will bear con- 

 finement better than Editor Root sup- 

 poses. 



♦^ 



Profits on Comb and Extracted Honey 



A question pretty sure, sooner or 

 later, to arise in the mind of every one 

 who embarks to any considerable ex- 

 tent in bee-keeping is this: "Which 

 will pay best, the production of comb 

 or of extracted honey?" And many a 

 one who has settled the question prac- 

 tically for himself is still so far from 

 being entirely sure about it that he is 

 always alert for anything like definite 

 information on the subject. Hence the 

 figures from so extensive and experi- 

 enced a bee-keeper as E. D. Townsend, 

 as given on page 720, last month, will 

 be read with interest. 



They seem to settle the question in 

 favor of comb honey. For is not 37 2-3 

 percent better than 34 1-2 percent by 

 the amount of 3 1-6 percent? But it 

 will hardly do to settle down upon it 

 that for all places and all conditions 

 there is more profit in comb honey than 

 in extracted honey. One weighty argu- 

 ment against any such conclusion is that 

 many men of intelligence who have had 

 experience in the production of both 

 kinds of honey produce extracted honey 

 exclusively. They would hardly do so 

 if it were not more profitable for them. 

 What is best for one locality may not 

 be best for all localities. Indeed, it is 

 possible that what is best for one bee- 

 keeper in a given locality may not be 

 best for another in the same locality. 



Coming down to the direct case in 

 hand, does the fact of that 3 1-6 per- 

 cent in favor of comb honey settle it 

 beyond question that Mr. Townsend 

 can make more money by producing 

 comb honey? If a return on the capital 

 invested were the chief factor in the 

 case, the matter of labor being insignifi- 

 cant, then the answer might be conclu- 

 sive. But is it so? To take an ex- 

 treme case for illustration, suppose we 

 put the question, "Which is more pro- 

 fitable, chopping cordwood or produc- 

 ing honey?" Suppose Mr. Townsend 

 invests $1.00 in an ax, and gets $300 in 

 the course of the year for chopping; 

 that would leave him a profit of $299. 



