December, 191 1. 



American Hee Journal 



room, all we have to do is to slide this 

 dummy along and insert more empty 

 frames, one or two as needed, when, at 

 the end of the season, we shall have all 

 the frames the bees have occupied filled 

 with comb. 



As to bo-x-hives, I really feel that the 

 bee-keeping world has no further use 

 for such. With frame-hives all sorts 

 of contraction or expansion can be 

 made, or any exchange of frames of 

 brood, empty combs or frames of 

 honey, so that the weak can be built 

 up, the stronger be made to help those 

 with a less vigorous queen, and those 

 rich in honey-supply, those which are 

 lacking. In fact, the frame-hive is the 

 only one that should be tolerated in 

 this ■20th century. 



If the bees of our correspondent are 

 short of stores, I would say, in the first 

 place, this matter should have been 

 looked after last September or Octo- 

 ber, at the latest, for winter is a poor 

 time to feed bees. It will pay any bee- 

 keeper to have so much enthusiasm 

 over the wants of his bees that he puts 

 them first, and neglects something else 

 rather than being " so busy " with other 

 things that his bees are neglected. 

 Here is a place where nine-tenths of 

 our beginners fail. They seem to think 

 that their old employments must be 

 attended to in any event, so the bees 

 are neglected very often to their be- 

 coming unprofitable, when bee-keeping 

 as a business is condemned, and the 

 finance put into the venture lost. 



But if the stores part was not at- 

 tended to when it ought to have been, 

 the conditions must be met as we find 

 them. Therefore, I would arrange 

 these hives so I could inspect them 

 every week without disturbing them 

 after the arranging, except to lift the 

 covering over them, which if the cov- 

 ering is of cloth, can be done so 

 gently that the bees will hardly notice 

 it. Two or three thicknesses of old 

 carpet, an old blanket cut up, or some- 

 thing which will keep the animal heat 

 from the bees and allow the moisture 

 exhaled from them to pass through, 

 will answer, and can be turned or 

 rolled up so noiselessly and witliout 

 any jarring of the hive, that the bees 

 can be looked at whenever necessary 

 without any bad effect. 



To know about when feeding will be 

 necessary, carefully roll or raise the 

 covering, and as this is done look at 

 the combs along the top-bars of the 

 frames, and as long as any sealed 

 stores are seen nearthe cluster of bees, 

 no feeding is necessary, and the bees 

 should not be further disturbed. Where 

 no such honey is seen, then the bees 

 must be fed. If plenty of sealed 

 honey is seen at one side of the hive, 

 while the cluster of bees is on the 

 other, the combs should be changed so 

 that this honey will come up to the 

 bees, fixing something under the cov- 

 ering, over the tops of the frames, so 

 that the bees can move over the tops of 

 the frames. In this way they will 

 "lead" along as long as this honey 

 lasts, while, otherwise, after they had 

 consumed the honey in that part of the 

 hive where they were clustered, they 

 are likely to starve by failure to cross 

 over the empty combs between to the 

 stores in the other end of the hive. 



Where no honey is seen, one or two 



combs furthest from the bees should 

 be removed, doing this so as to disturb 

 them as little as possible. These combs 

 are to be filled with syrup and given 

 back to the bees, if you have no combs 

 of sealed honey to set in their places. 

 This syrup should be of about the con- 

 sistency of honey, and about blood- 

 warm, so as to get into the cells easily. 



To get it into the cells, punch the 

 bottom of an old tin dipper full of 

 holes, punching from the inside out, so 

 that the jutting metal surrounding 

 these holes will make a lot of fine 

 streams when the syrup passes through, 

 having the holes about j-i inch apart 

 each way. By holding the dipper of 

 syrup up a foot or more from the 

 comb, the falling syrup will force the 

 air from the cells so they will be filled, 

 otherwise the syrup will simply and 

 mostly run off the comb as "water off a 

 duck's back." 



To prevent spattering and daubing 

 things generally, lay the comb down 

 flat in a wash tub or boiler, so the sides 

 of this vessel will catch all that does 

 not go into the cells as the combs are 

 filled, and while the syrup is still warm, 

 spread the frames of comb in the hive 

 until you come to where there are a 

 few bees at one side of the cluster, 

 placing the combs of syrup in the 

 empty space thus made, when all 

 should be brought up to bee-space 

 again, and the covering replaced. All 

 that is needed until spring should be 

 put in, if possible, as in this way better 

 results are likely to be obtained. 



Borodino, N. Y. 



Improvement in Honey-Bees 



BY DR. A. F. BONNEY. 



Discussing with a prominent bee- 

 man the possibility of improving the 

 honey-bee, he said : 



" We have had the bee 



but about 50 years." Meaning that it 

 has been but about that time since the 

 movable-frame hive made a business 

 out of apiculture. 



While this is true, there are other 

 factors to be considered, and the first 

 is, that in the time mentioned many 

 things have been discovered about 

 other animals than bees to enable us to 

 judge what might be done with the 

 bees were it not for some disturbing 

 factors not fully understood, and I am 

 inclined to think parthenogenesis is 

 the principal one. Owing to that, we 

 do not understand the heredity of the 

 bee as we do some other creations. 

 Mendelism has become known in the 

 time of which I write, and while there 

 be some who shy at it as they did and 

 do at Darwinism, it is as demonstrable 

 a truth as is chemistry, for it belongs 

 to the domain of mathematics, and until 

 we understand what relation partheno- 

 genesis holds to this newly-discovered 

 law — until we can put our finger down 

 on a queen and say: "This queen 

 mated with such and such a drone will 

 give such and such results," we are 

 groping. 



It is not our inability to mate purely, 

 for there are thousands of acres — yes, 

 thousand of square miles in the con- 

 fines of our own country where bees 

 have never been seen; moreover, with 



half a dozen colonies in a yard devoted 

 to rearing desirable drones results 

 might be attained. Further, bee-keep- 

 ers might do as chicken-raisers in some 

 parts of the country — give to adjacent 

 farmers and small bee-keepers desir- 

 able stock, even introduce queens, or 

 go a step further and exchange colo- 

 nies of Italians for their scrub bees. 

 This, of course, might not be practical 

 to men who need every pound of honey 

 they can produce, but such men seldom 

 try to do anything about breeding bees, 

 depending upon queen-rearers for their 

 improved stock; but there are some 

 who might try it. 



lam going to confess that I am one 

 of a few who look with suspicion on 

 some of the claims advanced by occa- 

 sional writers. Men are apt to grow 

 enthusiastic over the results of their 

 own labors ; too often effect is taken 

 for cause; a season's work satisfies. I 

 have in recent corresponding found 

 several bee-keepers who, like myself, 

 have secured wonderful crops of honey 

 from a colony one season, to find it 

 the poorest another season. This has 

 happened so often with me that I am 

 about ready to formulate a law which 

 will read: "There is no telling from 

 season to season what a colony of bees 

 will do." 



There is another thing to be remem- 

 bered, namely: It is practically im- 

 possible to establish in a court of law 

 the parentage of a certain bee, or sev- 

 eral, from a given hive. From one 

 mother we will get bees (neuters), any 

 one of which might have come from a 

 colony of Italians, or half-breeds, 

 Banats or Caucasians. A 5-banded 

 queen will yield bees of less than 5 

 bands ; some will even revert to the 

 original 3-banded Italian, all of which 

 makes it difficult to judge of results; 

 and when it comes to disposition, that 

 is, temper, and the instinct to gather 

 honey, the problem is rendered still 

 more difticult. I will say nothing about 

 non-swarming, for of late that is not 

 being so much discussed, and if we can 

 develop a breed of bees which will 

 always give a surplus of 100 pounds to 

 the colony, we do not care particularly 

 whether they swarm or not. 



Because I question present methods, 

 beliefs and statements, I am accused 

 of obstructing progress, of tearing 

 down instead of building; but those 

 who criticise are, I think, only impa- 

 tient of criticism. It does no good to 

 maintain an error, to persist in certain 

 statements because they are pretty and 

 smooth. If creative evolution be a 

 fact, ridicule can only delay for a short 

 time its universal acceptance. Once 

 demonstrated that the world was round 

 it never flattened again ; parthenogene- 

 sis once made plain, it suddenly became 

 generally believed, the world conced- 

 ing that the Creator probably knew 

 <vhat He was doing when He estab- 

 lished the law. 



In a wild state — that is, free — bees 

 stored barely enough to keep them over 

 winter, and in getting a surplus we have 

 not altered the animal one whit. It is 

 the hive, the method, not the breeding. 

 We feed early and late, thus saving 

 thousands of colonies which would 

 otherwise have perished ; we produce 

 a thousand queens where the bees 

 might have reared one ; we pack hives 



