(Entered as second-class matter July 30, 1907, at the Post-Offloe at Chicago, 111., under Act of March 3, 1879.) 

 Published Monthly at 75 cents a Year, by George W. York & Co., 118 West Jackson Boulevard. 



GEORGE W. YORK, Editor 



CHICAGO, ILL,, NOVEMBER, 1908 



VoL XLVni— No, 11 



"iforiaf ^ofes 



and Commenfs 



fc^ 



Uniting Weak Colonies 



Although it is better that the work 

 should be done earlier, there is still time 

 to unite weak colonies, and the begin- 

 ner is urged not to try to winter a num- 

 ber of weaklings. One of the lessons 

 learned by a beginner very slowly is 

 that it is the total number of bees one 

 has that counts, and not so much the 

 number of hives in which bees may be 

 found. 



Mr. Beginner finds it an easy thing to 

 increase. He has hived all afterswarms 

 separately, and perhaps not content with 

 the results of natural swarming he has 

 taken the matter of increase into his 

 own hands and made a number of colo- 

 nies — perhaps better named nuclei — by 

 artificial increase. As a result, not one 

 in 4 of his colonies is fit to enter the 

 winter, if indeed he has not divided up 

 that one in four. With so many hives 

 occupied, he looks forward hopefully 

 to the following spring, and in antici- 

 pation begins to count upon the great 

 increase he will make in the season fol- 

 lowing. He has yet to learn the hard 

 lesson that so long as he believes in 

 wintering weaklings, the larger the num- 

 ber he tries to winter the smaller the 

 number he will have the following 

 spring. 



The sad part about it is that telling 

 him the truth about it does little good. 

 Only when he learns by experience is 

 he willing to believe that it is better to 

 winter one strong colony, and feel 

 pretty certain he will have that one col- 

 ony at the opening of the next season, 

 than to attempt to winter two weaklings 

 with a fair chance that he will have 2 

 hives containing only dead bees the fol- 

 lowing spring. 

 But occasionally a beginner will be 



found who will so far overcome the 

 craze for rapid increase that he will 

 listen to a word of advice from experi- 

 ence, and it is for this occasional begin- 

 ner that this item is given. 



Good Point in Selling Honey 



Water is so abundant, so cheap, that 

 we hardly appreciate its value. Yet val- 

 uable as it is, one does not care to buy 

 it at the rate of several cents a pound 

 when it is not necessary. The man who 

 buys 100 pounds of turnips pays for 90 

 pounds of water. Many other articles 

 of food, although not containing so large 

 a proportion of water, have still more 

 or less of it, and in comparing articles 

 of diet the amount of water in them has 

 something to do with their relative 

 cheapness. 



Beekeepers are more or less familiar 

 with the percentage of water contained 

 in honey, but the probability is that the 

 majority of them have never thought of 

 the small amount as compared with 

 many other common foods. Ask the 

 average bee-keeper whether honey con- 

 tains more or less water than a juicy 

 beefsteak, and it would be nothing 

 strange to hear him say, "Honey is a 

 liquid, beefsteak is not ; of course there 

 is more water in the liquid." It has 

 perhaps never occurred to him that 

 there is 3 times as much water in beef- 

 steak as in honey. This is a good point 

 for the salesman to make when pre- 

 senting the merits of honey to the con- 

 sumer. W. K. Morrison thus puts it 

 in Gleanings: 



"Honey is one of the dryest of human 

 foods, as it usually has less than 20 percent of 

 water. Beefsteak, of the most expensive kind, 

 contains 65 percent, and even then there is 

 some bone to be reckoned with. Some of our 



most expensive fruits and vegetables are nearly 

 all water, 95 percent, and some even morel 

 This is a point that bee-keepers can harp on a 

 good deal. Anybody can easily see that, be- 

 tween a pound of steak at 18 cents and a 

 pound of honey at 18 cents, the advantage lies 

 with the honey. Moreover, honey will keep 

 indefinitely, whereas beefsteak deteriorates in a 

 few hours." 



Drone-Comb in Extracting-Sapers 



The common teaching is to discour- 

 age the drone-comb very largely, if not 

 entirely. Now comes M. H. Read, Hon. 

 Sec. Irish Bee-Keepers' Association, and 

 proposes "nothing less than to aim at 

 the production of a good supply of 

 drone-comb for use with the extractor." 



The first reason given is that the honey 

 will flow more readily from the larger 

 than from the smaller cells. There is 

 probably something in that. "Besides," 

 proceeds the writer, "the bees natur- 

 ally draw drone-cells out more than 

 worker-cells, and there is the advantage 

 of less labor in uncapping for a given 

 weight of honey. Further, spacing of 

 combs means fewer bee-spaces between 

 them in a super ; so that the super should 

 contain the more honey." 



This will no doubt appeal to the in- 

 experienced beginner, but it will hardly 

 bear investigation. "The bees naturally 

 draw drone-cells out more than worker- 

 cells" when both are. occupied with 

 brood, but do they when used for storing 

 honey? There may be just as wide spac- 

 ing with worker as with drone-comb, 

 and with the same spacing there will be 

 the same number of bee-spaces, and the 

 same amount of honey in the super. 



If drone-comb is suppressed at all in 

 the brood-chamber, the bees will be sure 

 to have drone-comb in the extracting- 

 super, unless prevented by excluder- 

 zinc, and some good extracted honey- 

 producers do not otherwise find it nec- 

 essary to use excluders. Even when an 

 excluder is used, have you never seen 

 the bees keeping drone-cells empty in the 

 super in the vain hope that the queen 

 would come up and occupy them? 



Crushing Bees When Handling the 

 Frames 



Between the end-bar of a frame and 

 the front or rear wall of a hive the 

 space is so small that some care must be 



