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-1NXEREST.S 



BUSHED BY(^-i-F\00 T' 



I^perYeai^ \©) rAEDINAOHlO 



Vol. XXL 



JULY 1, 1893. 



No. 13, 



STRAr Straws 



FROM DR. C. C. MILLER. 



How DO YOU make out at prevention of 

 swarms ? 



White ci-ovek Is simply immense this year. 

 Oh for the bees to gather it! 



The nom de plume epidemic seems to be 

 breaking out again in the bee-journals. 



Pythagoras, who lived to the age of 90, 

 attributed his longevity to the use of honey. 



Friend Root, you did a good thing when you 

 turned W. P. loose among those ancient bee- 

 books. How he does revel in them ! 



White clover, says Gleanings, "is follow- 

 ing up the locusts very closely." This year it 

 got in ahead of locusts at Marengo. Queer sea- 

 son, anyhow. 



Can a queen get through a smaller perfora- 

 tion while a virgin than after laying? is a 

 question I wish some of our careful investigat- 

 ors would settle. 



Which is best — to grumble because I haven't 

 bees enough to store all the honey clover yields, 

 or to be thankful all over because my bees have 

 all the honey they can handle? 



Cutting queen-cells, it is certain, can not 

 be relied on as a preventive of swarming-; but 

 it is equally certain that the practice has a 

 tendency to delay and in some cases to entirely 

 prevent it. 



Rambler's head's level as to the bottle 

 business. Local m'ohibition is a good step, but 

 it's not a very long step. Marengo has had no 

 saloons for 30 years, but the neighboring towns 

 make drunkards of her boys. 



Michigan's ahead! Got an experiment 

 station to be run at his own home by a live 

 bee-man, bee-ke-pers to have direct reports 

 from him in a live bee-paper. I don't blame 

 Hutch a bit fordoing a little mild crowing. 



Sheep as lawn-mowers in the apiary are 

 favored on page 494. I've tried sheep, horses, 

 and cows. Horses move hives the least of the 

 three. Sheep made as much trouble in that 

 direction as cows.- Cows are the dirtiest. 



A German writer advises against pavilions 

 or arrangement of bees in several stories, as he 

 finds that, when one of these colonies has a 

 playspell and another commences a playspell 

 after, the bees of the last unite with the first, 

 thus weakening the second. 



BuRR-coMBs over top-bars can be greatly re- 

 duced in all cases where hives have the old- 

 fashioned ^-inch space over top-bars. Just 



nail in the rabbet a strip Jg inch thick, and 

 there you are, with your space reduced a third, 

 and burr-combs reduced a good deal more. 

 Bees gather sweet honey 

 On days that are soney. 

 And store it away in the comb; 

 It seems very foney 

 That thus they make money 

 As far o'er the meadows they romb. 



A RATHER SAD alternative, as Rambler puts 

 it on page 474. A bee-keeper must keep cross 

 bees, marry a fighting wife, or go crazy. As 

 Rambler is still a bachelor, I guess his bees 

 can't be very good natured, for the brightness 

 of his intellect doesn't seem the least tarnished. 



Friend Root, you wouldn't be so near the 

 foot of the ladder if you had called for reports a 

 month later. The losses kept on late in the 

 spring, and many haven't as many colonies 

 now as they had when they reported. In at 

 least one State a good authority reports only 20 

 per cent left. 



' It may be safe now to report how many col- 

 onies I have left, as it is past the middle of 

 June, clover is booming, and I don't think any 

 more will die. A little more than half are 

 dead, and some of the living might about as 

 well be. I don't mind the winter, but deliver 

 me from another such spring. 



Watch queens at swarming, and see wheth- 

 er they are not. some of them, just as small as 

 when virgins. I think some have even smaller 

 abdomens than during part of their virginity, 

 and I suspect the thora.x remains unchanged in 

 size, and I'm pretty sure it's the thorax that 

 decides whether an excluder will exclude. 



Diarrhea was cured by a correspondent of 

 A. B. J., last winter, he says, in this way. He 

 cleaned the movable bottom-board, and placed 

 under the frames a piece of brown paper on 

 which a few drops of spirits of peppermint had 

 been previously spilled. That seemed to stop 

 the disease for two or three weeks, when the 

 process was repeated. 



Queen introduction, Layens' plan. Take 

 two or three frames from the center of the 

 queenless hive; brush them on the alighting- 

 board; quickly replace the frames; spray the 

 bees on the alighting-board with scented 

 sweetened water; spray also the queen and her 

 attendants, and drop them, in the crawling 

 mass that are entering the hive, and they will 

 be as old friends. 



How EXACTING readers of bee-journals are! 

 In reading a literary magazine, a religous 

 paper, or daily newspaper, they don't expect to 

 read the whole thing through, but each one 

 picks out and reads just what he likes; but in a 



