April, 1908. 



American Hee Journal 



confident, if you wait till the colony has 

 actually swarmed. 



2. All cells should be destroyed at first opera- 

 tion, although no harm will come if some are 

 left so young that the queens would not emerge 

 until the brood is put aown. All you care for 

 is to have none hatch out while over the ex- 

 cluder. At the time of rutting down the brood 

 all cells must be destroyed, but not many will 

 be started after the brood is put up. 



3. I think the chances for future swarming 

 are exactly the same as if the colony had 

 swarmed, no more, no less. Of course I can 

 not be too positive about this without more 

 experience. If a colony be treated very early, 

 I should rather expect it to swarm, just as I 

 would expect a very early strong swarm to cast 

 a virgin swarm. 



4. He thinks it would make bee-keeping too 

 easy, too much honey produced, and prices low- 

 ered. 



5. All that the Alley trap does is to hold 

 the queen when a swarm issues. A swarm may 

 be shaken when a queen is found in a trap, 

 or the treatment on page 70 used. 



I may add that if you work for extracted 

 honey there is no need to put the brood down. 

 Only in that case I should fill the lower story 

 with full sheets of foundation. The Sherzingcr 

 plan is to wait till a colony swarms, then give 

 the queen a lower story filled with founda- 

 tion, putting all the brood above an excluder. 



A Beginner's Questions. 



I have kept bees for a number of years but 

 never had any success with them. 



1. Will a bee-book help me? My experiments 

 with the bees almost always went wrong. 



2. Do you feed the bees between honey- 

 flows ? I find sometimes that young bees are 

 carried out of the hive dead. Don't you think 

 there is danger of starving? 



3. I have had a little experience in prevent- 

 ing swarming. I made a 14-frame hive and a 

 14-frame super. I hived a big swarm in that 

 the 4th of July. The bees did not store any 

 surplus that year, but the next year I put on 

 2 supers and there was no swarming that year, 

 and the bees stored 100 pounds of honey. In 

 the spring of 1907 the colony was weak. The 

 first swarm that came out of the other hive 

 clustered on the first hive and went in and 

 stayed. There was no swarming in 1907. Don't 

 you think that if they have plenty of room 

 they will not swarm? 



4. How many frames are there in a nucleus 

 hive? Where can I get one of Italian bees? 



5. How can I prevent butterflies from go- 

 ing into the hive and laying eggs, which 

 destroy the bees? I have had a number of 

 colonies destroyed. Minnesota. 



Answers. — i. I hardly know how to put the 

 answer strong enough. It would be a gain if 

 each bee-keeper would get a bee-book before he 

 owns a bee. I'm certain I would be doing a 

 favor to all without such a book if I should 

 say, "I'll not answer a question in this de- 

 partment till you get a bee-book and study it" 

 But I dare not say that, for some would 

 think it only laziness on ray part, and would be 

 angry. Let me assure you that it is big 

 money in your pocket to invest in a good book. 



2. Generallv it is not necessary to feed be- 

 tween flows, if plenty of honey is in the hives. 

 but if there should be a spell of dearth long 

 enough to stop the queen's laying, then it would 

 be wise to feed. 



3. Abundance of room will not always pre- 

 vent swarming, but it will go a long way to- 

 ward it. Plenty of room for the queen is the 

 best kind of policy. 



4. Nucleus hives vary greatly. One may be 

 made to contain 3 or more frames of very 

 small size. Except for queen-rearers, hives of 

 full size containing 2 to 4 full-sized frames 

 are generally used. Indeed, some queen-rear- 

 ers prefer full-sized frames. You will find 

 Italian queens advertised in this Journal. 



5. Strong colonies are the best prevention 

 against the bee-moth. But Italian bees will 

 keep tlicni at bay, even if not so very strong. 



^experiences 



Wintered Well on Sugar Syrup. 



Bees are coming out in excellent shape where 

 they were provided with sugar syrup stores last 

 fall, or in districts where the flow was good. 



However, there are symptoms of bees not hav- 

 ing wintered well unless they were well pro- 

 vided as above. I have now taken out of the 

 cellar about 280 colonies, and have found only 

 2 dead. These were bees taken from a neigh- 

 bor just before cellaring, and had to be shaken 

 on cold combs of honey, so they should not 

 count. R. F. H01.TERMANN. 



Brantford, Ont.. March 26. 



Wintered Well in Shed. 



I have taken 40 colonies out of a shed where 

 I had them all winter, and they seem all right. 

 I lost only one out of the 40 colonies. I have 

 100 colonies in the cellar and will try to take 

 them out this week. Wm. J. Healy. 



Mineral Point, Wis., March 30. 



Stray Swarm in December. 



I had a swarm of bees come to my place 

 the last week in December last, and went in 

 with a small colony I had. Did you ever hear 

 of anything like that before for that time of 

 the year? David Mainwarinc. 



Barclay, Kans., March 5. 



Bees Wintered Well — Good Prospect 

 for Honey. 



I have just finislied examining my 90 colonies 

 of bees. I find them in fine condition, strong in 

 bees, and plenty of honey, with a loss of 3 colo- 

 nies. I winter them on summer stands, using 

 leaves over the bees to absorb the moisture. We 

 have a fine stand of white clover, and the 

 fruit-buds have not advanced as far as they 

 were last year at this time. If the weather con- 

 tinues favorable, everything bids fair for a 

 good honey crop this year. 



J. G. CrEighton. 



Harrison, Ohio, March 16. 



Bees Wintered Well. 



I have wintered my bees out-doors this win- 

 ter with great success. My colonies have come 

 out strong, and not one queenless colony. 



Hannibal, Mo., March 16. 



ChAS. iiMITH. 



Very Mild Winter — Bees Breeding. 



This winter has been very mild — no snow at 

 all, and only a little white frost in the morn- 

 ing 4 or s times. There was not one week that 

 bees could not buzz around. February i, I 

 opened all the hives and fed about 200 pounds 

 of honey, sealed in combs of course, and they 

 seemed to be doing well. I found brood in 

 one or two combs in the most of them, and 

 it looked as if there were more young bees 

 in them than some seasons over 2 months 

 later. I honestly believe that they have kept 

 on breeding all winter. The thermometer has 

 stood most of the time around 50 degrees, and 

 the extremes have been 30 and 70 degrees. 

 When it is cold at night it is generally fine 

 weather, and warm, during the day. 



But say, can you give me the address of 

 that $7,500 pretty girl? A man never knows 

 what may happen. Maybe Miss Wilson held 

 that back purposely, for some reason. For 

 my part I would be willing to knock off the 

 first figure if I could get $500 worth of honey 

 next season. O. K. RiCE. 



Wahkiakum Co., Wash., Feb. 27. 



Bees Carrying Pollen — Mild Winter. 



This beautiful, spring-like weather my bees 

 are at work as if it were summer-time, carry- 

 ing in pollen. If the weather continues this 

 way bees will do well. But it has started too 

 warm like last year. We have had a very mild 

 winter. There have not beerj many days that 

 the bees could not fly. Maples are in bloom, 

 and peaches will soon be. R. B. Perry. 



Greenfield, Tenn., March 5. 



Home-Made Bee-Hives. 



Did you ever make a bee-hive. Did you 

 ever make two of them? And were they both 

 the same size? 



After spending a few years in the planing 

 mill, running different kinds of machines, and 

 putting the work together, I will say to the 

 man wanting good hives, don't use home-made, 

 but get them from the supply-house or send 

 to the factory for them, where they make a 

 specialty of that kind of work, where they are 

 prepared to do it with their special machines, 

 then you can rest assured that each hive will 

 be exactly tne same size, everything fitting 

 nicely. It will then be a pleasure to nail 

 them together and get them ready for use ; 



then, too, the inside fixtures can be changed 

 from one hive to another, or be replaced by 

 new ones if necessary; all being of the same 

 •standard size where there is no trouble or 

 worry about their fitting. 



Do not trust the mill-hand to cut out a few 

 hives for you, unless you are there to watch 

 the work, for little he cares about the lengths 

 or widths, whether they are just right or not, 

 or whether the stock is what it should be. The 

 general mill-work does not need to be so accu- 



rate 



close- 



long t 



to get 

 worth, 

 with a 



-their work is quite different. 



To make a hive by hand requires a skilled 



mechanic, and good tools. It is easy to vary 



the size of a hive a sixteenth of an inch or 



re, getting some pieces a little too 



little too short, making a bad mess of 



the frames when it comes to putting them in or 



exchanging them, which is often done. 



The corners of a hive should be dovetailed 

 together, then you can nail from both ways, 

 making a corner that will stay and not open up 

 in a short time. A mitered corner is equally 

 as good, but harder to cut and fit together. 



I would not advise hand-power machines or 

 buzz-saws; they are only an aggravation. Be- 

 fore purchasing a buzz-saw, it would be well 

 insurance on each finger for its full 

 It is an old saying, "Don't monkey 

 buzz-saw," and I wish that I had 

 not. C. K. 



Mechanicsburg, O. 



Bees Wintered in Cold Cellar. 



Bees are in good condition in this locality, 

 and the warm days we had gave the bees an 

 opportunity for a cleansing flight after their 

 winter confinement. I moved my bees last 

 November 8th, 3 miles, over very bad roads, 

 and put them into the cellar without having a 

 flight, and the cellar isn't dry. Sometimes 

 it froze in the cellar, but I never had my 

 bees in as good condition as they are this 

 spring. I lost none, and all have good queens, 

 as they have brood in the hive, and eggs, too. 

 I put nothing over the brood-chamber but the 

 cover. Nick Jentgen. 



IvaMotte, Iowa, March 30. 



Chilled Brood and Foul Brood. 



Mr. Editors — On page 321 of the last edi- 

 tion of "Langstroth," by Dadant, in giving 

 advice on shipping bees to the South in the 

 Fall, and returning them to the North in the 

 Spring, the author uses the following language: 



"As the colonies become strong very early 

 in the South, if they are brought back North 

 before the warm weather, their brood may be- 

 come chilled, and a tendency to the develop- 

 ment of foul brood is encouraged.*' 



Now, what I wish to know is, what relation 

 is there between chilled brood and foul brood? 

 If- chilled brood induces foul brood, then it is 

 easy to understand why there is so much foul 

 brood; or, rather, it is a wonder there is not 

 much more than there is. Will Mr. Dadant 

 explain through the American Bee Journal what 

 he means by the above statement. You know 

 we regard him pretty good authority on al- 

 most anything pertaining to apiculture. 



Wm. M. Whitney. 



Evanston, III. 



We referred the foregoing to Mr. Dadant, 

 who replies as follows: 



There is no connection between chilled brood 

 and foul brood, that is, the decayed brood does 

 not usually contain the germs of foul brood, 

 but the authors believe that with the presence 

 of decayed brood, pickled brood or other filth, 

 there is more room for the development of the 

 germs of foul brood if those germs should 

 happen to be present. Filth does not usually 

 contain the germs of typhus, Asiatic cholera, 

 or yellow fever, yet it is a generally recog- 

 nized probability that the germs of those dis- 

 eases will propagate more rapidly in such con- 

 ditions as are found in ill-kept homes. Like- 

 wise it seems quite probable that there is great- 

 er danger of the propagation of foul brood (the 

 germs of which must originate somewhere) in 

 hives containing decayed brood. We recom- 

 mend care in the avoidance of decayed brood 

 on the same principle that the boards of health 

 of a city enjoin cleanliness to avoid epi- 

 demics. C. P. Dadant. 



Queens and Drones — Propolis. 



I have seen so much in the bee-papers about 

 queens and drones. Now here is the right 

 way of it: The queen that has been fertilized 

 rears fertile drones, because they will breed, 

 and that shows they have been made fertile, 

 no matter how. Now the queen that has never 

 been fertilized, every one admits, lays unfer- 

 tile eggs. That means unfertile worker-eggs. 

 Now that is the difference between the two 

 kinds of drones — one fertile and the other 



