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'PuaiiiHEDBY^l-nPOl' 



Vol. XXI. 



AUG. 1, 1893. 



No. 15. 



Stray Straws 



FROM DR. C. C. MILUER. 



The yellow color of beeswax is due to the 

 pollen consumed by the bees. 



To PREVENT BREAKING combs iu extractor, 

 F. Trebnitz, in Centralblatt, recommends to ex- 

 tract from one side before uncapping the other. 

 • I HELD A QtTEEN-CELL in my fingers while the 

 inclosed queen was quahking. You would be 

 surprised to know how strongly it jarred my 

 fingers. 



Was THERE EVER any one thing so earnestly 

 sought aftiM' by bee-keepers as some plan to 

 prevent swarming? Surely, out of all the 

 studying and experimenting, something of val- 

 ue will result. 



White is justly considered the best color for 

 hives, providing "they are paint€d; but a French 

 writer thinks it is more agreeable to the bees if 

 the part about the entrance be painted some 

 color from yellow to brown. 

 dRed clover is becoming unprofitable for 

 farmers on account of an insect-pest, and 

 Hutchinson says the acreage of alsike in his 

 part of Michigan is on the increase as a con- 

 sequence. Nice thing for bee-keepers. 



Complaint is made by U. Beaudoux, in 

 Progres Apicole, that foundation is made with 

 more cells to the square inch than natural comb 

 contains, resulting in rearing inferior workers. 

 Possibly the matter needs consideration in this 

 country. 



I made nuclei one day — perhaps a dozen — 

 using bees that had been queenless a day. and 

 gave a pulled queen to each nucleus. Every 

 queen was killed. If the bees had been queen- 

 less twice as long, I think all would have been 

 well. 



I measured some comb built by the bees of a 

 queen I got from Dr. Murdock, and found there 

 were 33 cells to 7 inches, instead of the orthodox 

 35. Then I measured some built by common 

 bees, and was surprised to Knd these latter still 

 larger. 



New things I'm always a little shy of ti 11 I 

 have thoroughly tried them, or, rather, till the 

 bees have tried them ; but I did have pretty 

 strong faith in the Langdon non-swarmer. I'm 

 sorry to say it doesn't seem to work " in my lo- 

 cality." 



A KEENER disappointment doesn't often 

 come. to me in bee-keeping matters than to find 

 tliat queen-excluders do not exclude. I'm 

 somewhat skeptical as to whether perforations 



can be made small enough to prevent the pas- 

 sage of queens without being too great a hin- 

 drance to workers. 



Hutchinson is " redhot " on the subject of 

 State experiment apiaries. It's a good subject 

 to be redhot about, and he's going to make it 

 the special topic for the August number. He 

 has a capital leader on the topic in the July 

 number. 



My bees seem worse than usual this year 

 about uniting and going back to the wrong 

 hive when they swarm without a queen. I 

 don't like having the supers of one hive de- 

 serted in that way while another hive has bees 

 piled all over it. 



Queen-excluders are made with wood slats, 

 and also of an entire sheet of perforated zinc, 

 wood-bound. lam told that ten of the latter 

 are used to one of the former. Why? They are 

 a trifle cheaper, but the slatted ones keep their 

 shape ever so mucli better. 



Doolittle makes a paddle of peculiar con- 

 struction with which to kill bees that persist 

 in chasing and scolding. A very good substi- 

 tute for this is a piece of very heavy wire cloth. 

 It will fetch the bee every whack, while a 

 stick will miss nine times out of ten. 



I don't often give a young queen a chance 

 to do so, but the other day a queen flew away 

 just as soon as it came out of its cell. Flew 

 strong too. But that's nothing new; for when 

 half a dozen queens come out with an after- 

 swarm, all but one of them must have just 

 hatched. 



Dead bees to a considerable number are 

 often seen in front of a hive to which a queen 

 has been introduced, their curled-up position 

 showing that they have been stung to death. 

 I think this is an indication that the queen will 

 be received all right. The bees which make an 

 attempt on the queen's life are stung to death. 



Five cells to the inch is commonly under- 

 stood to be the correct measurement of worker 

 comb. As a result of .30 measureYnents, Cowan 

 found great diversity, ranging from 4.74 to 5.38 

 to the inch. Some that I measured showed 

 larger cells than his largest, being 4.t)() cells to 

 the inch— the work of a black swarm that came 

 to me. 



Herr Reepkn. in Centralblatt, gives the 

 word "bee" in different languages, as follows: 

 Latin, apis; Italian, ape or pecchUi: Spanish, 

 (iheja ; French, abeille; German, hienc or imme; 

 Swedish, hi : Dutch, hij ; Polish, pszczolla ; 

 Russian, p'clui-lnh; Greek, melissa ; Danish, 

 hi : Arabian, nahli ; Malay, huromj inata. 

 Wouldn't it be handier if they'd all call it 

 " bee" ? 



