1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



59 



HEADS OF Grain 



From Different Fields 



HONEY COULD NOT BE FILTERED THROUGH CHARCOAL. 



On page 674 Mr. H. D. Tennent suggests that bone 

 charcoal might lighten honey-dew and improve its fla- 

 vor. In order to benefit by the bone-charcoal treat- 

 ment the honey would have to soak right into the 

 pores of the boneblack and percolate intimately 

 through it. I do not see how such a heavy syrup as 

 table honey could possibly do this. I never worked as 

 chemist in a sugar-house using boneblack (beet- works 

 use sulphur fumes instead); but I see in some text- 

 books that the filtering is done on intermediate syr- 

 ups, say 30 or at most about 50 per cent solid matter. 

 Honey at about 80 per cent would have to be diluted 

 by more than its volume of water, and filtered hot. I 

 am afraid it would not be possible to bring it back to 

 80 again without boiling, and then the product might 

 get darker in color than it was in the first place. 

 Also, if boiled, the honey would show a reaction for 

 furfural, and this might bring it in collision with the 

 pure-food laws. 



A FASTER WAY OF CAGING BEES. 



It seems to me that time might be saved in putting 

 bees into queen-cages by using a little arrangement 

 something like the one shown below. The bees could 

 be allowed to crawl in from one or two while the oper- 



C 



ator would be brushing some more into another from 

 the proper nucleus. If a beginner had just one he 

 would be happy in relieving his clumsy fingers from 

 the strain. Ben P. Edgerton. 



Hicksville, Ohio, Nov. 4. 



[Your arrangement for catching a lot of bees, and 

 running them into a cage, looks, on first thought, as if 

 it might work very nicely. Your idea seems to be to 

 put the bees into a dark inclosure, assuming that they 

 will go toward the light and into the cage; but in ac- 

 tual practice we doubt very much whether they will 

 do this. Of course some of them would go into the 

 cage, but others would remain in the wooden bottle, 

 so to speak. While we never tried it, we doubt very 

 much whether for average work a queen-breeder could 

 put up as many queens with this arrangement as he 

 could in the old-fashioned way, picking up the queens 

 one by one, and putting them into a cage as illustrated 

 recently in these columns. The hand-pick method is 

 sure of results.— Ed.] 



ITALIANS DYING FASTER THAN THE BLACKS. 



I introduced Italian queens to some of my black bees 

 last summer. I examined them late in the fall, and 

 they had plenty of honey to carry them through. 

 In fact, the Italians had more honey than the blacks. 

 I keep my bees outdoors all winter, as we don't have 

 very cold weather down here. 



The coldest weather we have had this fall and winter 

 was just cold enough to freeze water so ice would be 

 about a quarter or half an inch in thickness; and every 

 time these little cold spells come, which last from one 

 to three days, I can find from half to a handful of dead 

 bees among the Italians, and none at all among the 

 blacks. 



WHAT IS THE BEST PLAN TO KEEP DOWN INCREASE? 



I have nearly as many bees as I want, and I wish to 

 adopt some plan to keep them from swarming. The 

 above two subjects are some I want to have your ideas 

 on; and any thing you give me on the same will be ap- 

 preciated. 



TOBACCO-BLOSSO.MS NOT INJURIOUS TO BEES. 



Mr. J. A. McKinnon, page 787, Dec. 15, wants to know 

 whether tobacco is harmful to bees, I live in the to- 

 bacco belt of North Carolina, in Granville Co. Tobac- 

 co is the principal money crop, and it is grown here on 



a large scale. I have noticed, time and again, when 

 tobacco-fields were in full bloom with thousands of 

 blossoms, and I have never yet seen a bee gathering 

 nectar from them. For this reason I don't think it was 

 tobacco-blossoms that affected Mr. McKinnon's bees. 



Tar River, N. C, Dec. 27. J. Y. CREWS. 



[Years ago some statement was made to the effect 

 that blacks were hardier than Italians. In 1879 we had 

 something like 20 colonies of them among our Italians. 

 We kept them to test them in comparison with yellow 

 bees. They were inferior as honey-gatherers, mean as 

 robbers, and no better for wintering, or at least that 

 winter, as it was an ordinary one. There has been a 

 sort of impression that black races of all kinds are 

 more hardy than any of the yellow races. This is pos- 

 sibly true, as their native habitats are in colder cli- 

 mates, but not colder than the home of leather-colored 

 Italians on the Alps of northern Italy and Switzerland. 

 Any yellow bees bred for yellow color, according to 

 our experience (and we tested a good many strains of 

 them), will not winter as well as the leather-colored 

 strains of Italians. It is possible that you may have 

 had some of this too much inbred weakened yellow 

 blood. 



The best plan to keep down increase is too large a 

 question to discuss fully here, and we would, there- 

 fore, refer you to the text-books, particularly our ABC 

 and X Y Z of Bee Culture, under head of Swarming. 

 If we were running for extracted, and desired no 

 swarming, we would use ten-frame three and four 

 story hives, without queen-excluding honey-boards. 

 If we were producing comb honey we would use any 

 standard hive, clipping the queen's wings, and hive 

 the swarm as it comes out on the old stand in another 

 hive containing foundation starters. The parent hive 

 we would place at one side, and at the close of the sea- 

 son we would put it on top of the hive of the swarm, 

 of course taking away one of the queens. 



With regard to the question of whether the nectar 

 from tobacco-blossoms is injurious to bees, your ex- 

 perience would prove nothing, as you say the bees in 

 your locality do not work on the blossoms. What we 

 wish to know is the effect of tobacco-nectar on bees 

 when they do work on the plant. — Ed.] 



WHAT SHOULD A SECTION OF HONEY WEIGH? 



On p. 591, Oct. 1, is an item on "scales for weighing 

 sections," stating that all sections not weighing 13^ 

 oz. should be put down as seconds. Now, will a 13>^- 

 oz. section, or even 14^, go for a No. 1 section? There 

 are 16 ounces in a pound, in New York; then the sec- 

 tion itself weighs about an ounce when dry; and if a 

 customer is to get 1 lb. of honey it should weigh 17 oz. 

 or else honey goes for 12 oz. to the pound. Please en- 

 lighten me, as I am a beginner. Most of my sections 

 weighed 15 oz, when full. 



ARE THE GOLDENS HARDY? 



Are the golden Italian bees as rugged and as good 

 workers as the three-banded? They are very pretty; 

 and if as good every way I should think there would 

 be a good demand for them. 



Johnsonville, N. Y., Dec. 20. A. D. CASE. 



[There is no advantage in having a section weigh 

 more than a pound. Most dealers prefer to have a 

 scant pound; and some even prefer to have them 

 weigh no more than ten or twelve ounces. A full 

 pound of honey at the present time runs anywhere 

 from 18 to 25 cts. at retail. The average householder 

 wants something he can get for about 15 cents. 



Our experience with golden Italians (and we tested 

 a good many strains of them winter after winter) is 

 that they are not hardy in comparison with ordinary 

 strains of Italians that have not been weakened by in- 

 breeding. Our different apiarists who have worked 

 for us have, time and time again, remarked that extra- 

 yellow bees that we keep to show to visitors are the 

 first to die in winter if there is any mortality. While 

 the ordinary strains would come through in fairly 

 good condition the yellow bees would either die out- 

 right or be very much weakened before spring.— ED.] 



WHAT APPEARS TO BE POSITIVE PROOF OF THE VALUE 

 OF BEE-POISON FOR RHELTUATISM. 



Dr. Bonney says, page 784, Dec. 15, he had rheuma- 

 tism after becoming immune to bee-poison. That is 

 one side of the story. Let me give you the other one. 

 I used to have rheumatism so bad that several times I 

 was for a week at a time on my back unable to get np 

 on my feet without suffering extreme pain. Since I 

 began keeping beps I have been entirely rid of that 

 ailment with the exception noted below, and I believe 

 that my cure was due to the bee-poison; but the doc- 



